Re: What should I say to a *nix community?

[PaulMmn <PaulMmn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Some truly ugly code is like...  well, it's so ugly that it either 
should be scrapped, rewritten, or propped up so it keeps working.

Hoops??  I'd be willing to build a wall of 'custom interfaces' around 
that piece of code to avoid having to touch it!  I'd be willing to 
burn my RPG debugging templates to avoid having to touch it!

This is -result- of "most software is continually modified."  By 
people who didn't understand the program, and just patched the 'bad 
parts.'

The problem is that if it works correctly, and if it is truly ugly, 
it is dangerous to The Company to monkey with it.

That piece of ugly code is likely -filled- with important business 
logic!  Ideally, the logic should be extracted into a nice, 
streamlined, well-designed, well-written, well-documented, easily 
maintained module, that can be called from any program that needs to 
use that logic.  And that's one of those "Major Projects" that's nice 
to dream about, but we -really- "need" to add that GUI interface to 
the order entry system first...

--Paul E Musselman
PaulMmn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



At 8:16 AM -0400 8/26/08, Charles Wilt wrote (in part):
> But most software is continually modified, thus there is indeed an ROI
> for rewriting to make use of more modern and easier to maintain
> techniques.
>
> Imagine the ugliest piece of code you have to work with on a 
> periodic basis....
>
> How much of a headache is that?  How many hoops are you willing to
> jump through to avoid having to change that legacy code.