Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)

infobip.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 431 posts

Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)

#11

Post by kreco »

tayo42 wrote: post #6

Is there a significant amount of people not working on code that already exists? That's like the total opposite of my experience

In one of my past job, for some reasons I was the only one diving into legacy 12+ years old code.

The other members kept producing new code and debugging new code.

Disregarding of whether it's fair or not, there was a kind of balance that kept the boat floating.

I left since then and it wouldn't surprise me if the legacy was being rewritten from scratch (and over-engineered).

Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)

#15

Post by pavel_lishin »

calebpeterson wrote: post #8

I once had a manager that was fond of saying: > Experience is what you get when you don’t have any. The only better experience than working on a legacy codebase is working on a greenfield project long enough to watch it become legacy and see the good and bad consequences of past decisions.

Especially when they're your decisions, decisions you pushed for and felt very good about at the time.

Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)

#16

Post by pjc50 »

jmclnx wrote: post #4

And I would add, you are not an "expert" until you had to reverse engineer a program who's source disappeared a decade or more ago :) But an interesting article for modern times.

In contrast to sibling comment: this is actually quite fun in small doses. Wouldn't like to have to do it for an entire product, but I've done some "competitive analysis" before.

Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)

#17

Post by pavel_lishin »

tayo42 wrote: post #6

Is there a significant amount of people not working on code that already exists? That's like the total opposite of my experience

"Code that already exists" isn't necessarily the same as a "legacy project", though everyone's definition of what "legacy" means is different.

Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)

#19

Post by namdnay »

calebpeterson wrote: post #8

I once had a manager that was fond of saying: > Experience is what you get when you don’t have any. The only better experience than working on a legacy codebase is working on a greenfield project long enough to watch it become legacy and see the good and bad consequences of past decisions.

And the only better experience than "working on a greenfield project long enough to watch it become legacy and see the good and bad consequences of past decisions" is working on a second greenfield project long enough to see that drastically overcompensating for all the bad things from the first one is not the right solution either :)

Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)

#20

Post by joezydeco »

As an embedded engineer in a new position I always volunteer to take up an old crusty legacy product that nobody else wants to touch. It's a quick education into how the company approaches projects and all the ghosts they had to fight along the way. All the business logic is there, and sometimes it's even documented.

And once you have a semblance of knowledge about how the thing works and how to make fixes, you've built a small moat around your career there.

Post reply on HN