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

Post by indymike » Mon, Feb 17, 2025, 7:14 PM UTC

maerF0x0 wrote: post #48

gorbachev wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> how much they disparage the previous team's work. And many fail to discern between "disparage" and "critique" or even "Question in order to learn" One of the greatest failings I've seen in leadership in our time is the idea that in order to make a critique one must come with a solution in hand. As a leader I want to know the things that are going wrong as soon as they're seen, not to require someone to go through t…

Post by throwaway5752 » Mon, Feb 17, 2025, 7:21 PM UTC

itronitron wrote: post #66

joezydeco wrote: post #20

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 bu…

Additionally, reading through other people's code is educational and it also builds self-esteem.

Post by purplethinking » Mon, Feb 17, 2025, 7:25 PM UTC

namdnay wrote: post #19

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 :)

Post by milesrout » Mon, Feb 17, 2025, 7:28 PM UTC

codegeek wrote: post #47

Legacy or not, I don't consider anyone really senior unless they have spent building and more importantly maintaining/fixing a system at least for 3-5 years at one single place and have done this at least 2-3 times across different companies. We all know that it is a lot easier to start a new/greenfield project with shiny tech etc. It is a lot harder to maintain especially once it is 2-3 years old and in production w…

Post by quickslowdown » Mon, Feb 17, 2025, 7:33 PM UTC

globnomulous wrote: post #109

atoav wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always tend to say: "Everybody learns better from their own mistakes, but if you are empathic you can also learn from other people's mistakes". The latter is less costly and only requires you "only" to open your eyes and look at projects that are in an ugly state the right way. Yet surprisingly few people are capable of looking at someone elses fucked up project and not going all like: "Hah! Idiots! I would never h…

> which software ages like fine wine and which ages more like milk Now I'm curious. What software has aged well? What software hasn't? Do certain types or categories of software tend to age better or worse?