You're also not a senior engineer until you've been forced to adopt the coding style and practices of that legacy project. A lot of younger developers like to come into a new project and slap on the latest frameworks or coding practices that they've picked up recently, without acknowledging that breaking the standards of the project lead to higher mental load to maintain that code over the long term.
You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)
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Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)
#32As 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 bu…
Haven’t you also often made a moat between yourself and doing literally anything else more interesting at the company?
Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)
#33You're also not a senior engineer until you've been forced to adopt the coding style and practices of that legacy project. A lot of younger developers like to come into a new project and slap on the latest frameworks or coding practices that they've picked up recently, without acknowledging that breaking the standards of the project lead to higher mental load to maintain that code over the long term.
Coding practices are another tool with trade-offs involved in their use. Mental load is sometimes another word for learning. So I like to hear it from juniors because whatever is ultimately decided, it's an opportunity for them to have a real discussion around trade-offs and the benefits versus the costs of a particular approach which is invaluable for them.
Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 :)
I keep telling people v1 of anything always sucks. One of the tells of an inexperienced engineer I use is how much they disparage the previous team's work.
I always pick apart previous teams' work.. it's how I learn. I question most every decision because I'm curious why they made those decisions. And it lets me think about how I'd do it better. And yes, I know that many poor decisions are not necessarily the developer's fault. It could be bad specs, lack of time, etc.
Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)
#35You're also not a senior engineer until you've been forced to adopt the coding style and practices of that legacy project. A lot of younger developers like to come into a new project and slap on the latest frameworks or coding practices that they've picked up recently, without acknowledging that breaking the standards of the project lead to higher mental load to maintain that code over the long term.
It isn’t just younger developers doing this, nor even inexperienced ones. I’ve seen a ton of experienced people do this to themselves and their teams, mostly it seems to be able to pad their resume, but some honestly believe newest and shiniest is best.
Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)
#36It is interesting, if there is a bug reported in the legacy system, the ticket can bounce between juniors and mids for months without fix in sight. It's like they don't have ability to read and debug code.
When it is something new, it is "easy" - check Stackoverflow or ask LLM and then modify code until it "works" - which doesn't even need any understanding of how it works. Just tweak until there are no errors and screen makes the manager happy.
Since corporations started cutting budgets - don't pay for training and get developers who know how to write CV and memorised interview questions and agree to work for substandard pay, it is all slowly going downhill. More experienced developers are tired of handholding new employees through basics or very much developing the tickets for them on top of their own workload and so they quit and problems are getting bigger and bigger.
Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
Legacy 12 year old? Try 40 - 45 year old code. Back when people mandated an 80 character line width because their CRT monitors only had so much resolution
IMHO 80 char lines are easier on my eyes, independent of monitor tech. I get antsy all the way over there on the right! Past 100 chars I am simply less confident in being able to pull off the ocular carriage return to the next line.
Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)
#38Well, if you are long enough in the industry, in retrospective, most of the code, frameworks and platform you have worked on are now considered "legacy", given the dynamic fast pace of our environments.
Data-centers -> Cloud Monolith -> API and Services Databases.... Memcache -> Redis JS/JQuery -> MVP Framework Git. and not to forget K8S.
and this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)
#39All I have been doing for the past 10 years is deal with legacy. At least with the current one, the legacy is more recent and provides opportunities for myself and the other on my team to iterate on whatever we got, particularly in the realm of making operational improvements.
Re: You're not a senior engineer until you've worked on a legacy project (2023)
#40I 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 :)
Oh man this one hits home. I don’t do much coding anymore but my general advice to folks I lead is you’re never going to be happy with how you did things and just make sure it scales and is well tested.
Edit: oh and how could I forget as simple and readable as possible