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

Ask HN: Inherited the worst code and tech team I have ever seen. How to fix it?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 704 posts

Re: Ask HN: Inherited the worst code and tech team I have ever seen. How to fix it?

#371

Post by robotron »

jackblemming wrote: post #271
latchkey wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't work. That's simply not true. I've inherited something just as bad as this. We did a full rewrite and it was quite successful and the company went on to triple the revenue. > get some testing in place Writing tests for something that is already not functional, will be a waste of time. How do you fix the things that the test prove are broken? It is better to spend the time figuring out what all the featur…

Of course a full rewrite can be successful. This is the problem when people base their entire critical thinking on blog posts. They then go on to preach it everywhere as well!

Or some of us have experienced failed rewrites. It can be a potentially expensive mistake.

Re: Ask HN: Inherited the worst code and tech team I have ever seen. How to fix it?

#373

Post by robotron »

specialdragon wrote: post #176
seasoup wrote: post #102

A lovely knot to unravel! First, get everything in source control! Next, make it possible to spin service up locally, pointing at production DB. Then, get the db running locally. Then get another server and get cd to that server, including creating the db, schema, and sample data. Then add tests, run on pr, then code review, then auto deploy to new server. This should stop the bleeding… no more index-new_2021-test-jo…

I'd add putting in a static code analysis tool in there because that will give you a number for how bad it is (total number of issues at level 1 will do), and that number can be given to upper management, and then whilst doing all the above you can show that the number is going down.

The results might also be overwhelming in the beginning.

Re: Ask HN: Inherited the worst code and tech team I have ever seen. How to fix it?

#374

Post by hef19898 »

fny wrote: post #64

> this code generates more than 20 million dollars a year of revenue From a business perspective, nothing is broken. In fact, they laid a golden goose. > team is 3 people, quite junior. One backend, one front, one iOS/android. Resistance to change is huge. My mistake, they didn't lay a golden goose--they built a money printer. The ROI here is insane. > productivity is abysmal which is understandable. The mess is just…

Additional reason to switch jobs: It is perfectly working for now, as far as the company is concerned, the three man team is doing a tremendous job, and the team conviced itself of the same. Now they have to ship additional stuff, and think they are perfectly able to do so. You are there to make sure they ship, most likely they wont, because things work until they don't anymore. When they don't, and the team isn't shipping, guess who gets the blame? The one team member, the one thing that changed. And after that, the mess will only grow.

Edit: Typos. I suffer severe typing legasteny more often than not...

Re: Ask HN: Inherited the worst code and tech team I have ever seen. How to fix it?

#375

Post by rendall »

fny wrote: post #64

> this code generates more than 20 million dollars a year of revenue From a business perspective, nothing is broken. In fact, they laid a golden goose. > team is 3 people, quite junior. One backend, one front, one iOS/android. Resistance to change is huge. My mistake, they didn't lay a golden goose--they built a money printer. The ROI here is insane. > productivity is abysmal which is understandable. The mess is just…

In my opinion OP should seriously consider this advice.

I really mean nothing patronizing here, but I suspect OP does not have the corporate experience to handle this situation. This is a corporate equivalent of a double-black diamond downhill route. OP was hired by people who have little understanding of tech and already came in with guns blazing. I might almost wonder if OP's a sacrificial lamb.

But, the tech advice of not doing a rewrite, making tests, soothing any hurt feelings, creating local instances will help. Make the everyday coding experiences of the tech team nicer. Source control, local instances, and unit/integration/E2E tests are a gimme.

The old rule of thumb applies: pick only 2 of speed, cost or quality. You cannot have 3.

Re: Ask HN: Inherited the worst code and tech team I have ever seen. How to fix it?

#376

Post by mikewarot »

fny wrote: post #64

> this code generates more than 20 million dollars a year of revenue From a business perspective, nothing is broken. In fact, they laid a golden goose. > team is 3 people, quite junior. One backend, one front, one iOS/android. Resistance to change is huge. My mistake, they didn't lay a golden goose--they built a money printer. The ROI here is insane. > productivity is abysmal which is understandable. The mess is just…

The profit at all costs, just make the next quarter's numbers (so we get our bonus), attitude is what leads to disasters like Twitter.

Their pursuit of profits above all else have likely gotten people killed. They represent a clear and present danger to US National Security.

Re: Ask HN: Inherited the worst code and tech team I have ever seen. How to fix it?

#377

Post by tomohawk »

In similar situations, I've done full rewrites and I've done refactor over time.

Refactoring over time is by far the least risky, and is where you should start. And the start of that is understanding the scenarios and getting tests in place. At some point, you'll know the refactoring is working, or you'll know a rewrite is needed.

But that is just the technical side. Most of your risk is not there.

As others have mentioned, you need to get your new bosses on board and aware of what the situation really is in terms they understand (specific business risks, specific business opportunities) and make sure they have your back. You will be the first to go if they are taken by surprise. They need to understand the jeopardy to business that already exists, and that while the team has reached a point of relative stability, it is perilous, and some risks will need to be taken to get to a point of actual stability.

The other main risk is the team itself. What do they value? Is it in line with where you know things need to go? If they walk, who will maintaing the beast?

Re: Ask HN: Inherited the worst code and tech team I have ever seen. How to fix it?

#378

Post by agumonkey »

codingdave wrote: post #13

First off, no, a full rewrite is not only not necessary, but probably the worst possible approach. Do a piece at a time. You will eventually have re-written all the code, but do not ever fall into the trap of a "full re-write". It doesn't work. But before you re-write once line of code - get some testing in place. Or, a lot of testing. If you have end-to-end tests that run through every feature that is currently used…

i'd do it that way too,

- tests to cement interfaces

- gradually write module supporting this interface

- replace module on test clone and bench / retest it

when this module is ok, do another

Re: Ask HN: Inherited the worst code and tech team I have ever seen. How to fix it?

#379

Post by benjaminpv »

rendall wrote: post #356
blep_ wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why does our tracking pixel return a purple image? Now I'm really curious, is there some exciting non-obvious reason for a tracking pixel to be purple? Was it #FF00FF or more like #6600DD?

This definitely needs an answer. In fact, until OP can give us the right answer, we immediately need even wrong answers! You reading this. Yes, you. Give your best wrong answer below.

I worked on an app once that used two different, equally ancient libraries to a) generate thumbnails and b) create a png from a pdf. While modifying part of this process I started realizing that there were conditions where you'd get a PDF thumbnail at the end, but its output had a red tint to it.

Input looked fine and invoking each step manually worked fine as well.

Come to find out that certain PDFs contained color calibration information that, combined with how we were calling it, would treat ARGB as RGB. The input would have transparency info defined and the thumbnail generator would happily repurpose the alpha channel as the red channel instead.

Re: Ask HN: Inherited the worst code and tech team I have ever seen. How to fix it?

#380

Post by nkozyra »

samuellevy wrote: post #325
codingdave wrote: post #13

First off, no, a full rewrite is not only not necessary, but probably the worst possible approach. Do a piece at a time. You will eventually have re-written all the code, but do not ever fall into the trap of a "full re-write". It doesn't work. But before you re-write once line of code - get some testing in place. Or, a lot of testing. If you have end-to-end tests that run through every feature that is currently used…

Yeah, there's a process. It's something that I've done a bunch of times for a bunch of clients. There's so much low-hanging fruit there that's so easy to fix _right now_. No version control? Good news! `git init` is free! PHPCS/PHP-CS-fixer can normalise a lot, and is generally pretty safe (especially when you have git now). Yeah, it's overwhelming, but OP said that the software is already making millions - you don't…

git init seems like job #1 because at least then you can delete every commented out line and start a little cleaner.
Post reply on HN