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Yeah, one of the reasons I am hired is to un-fuck stuff that other people have spent a lot of time fucking up. I don't love it but I am good at it. Or at least the places that hire me and pay me to do it seem to think so.

I know I posted this to even though I don't consider myself a dev. The article leans in that direction. Don't forget the people that have to run that garbage code or on what they do to make it work better either or figuring out what is broken before you do (sometimes) or yelling at you in a bug report.

I do have a personal hate for "Agile" though. Mostly because I have never seen it work properly in practice. I guess I have not worked at enough places yet then?

Archive: https://archive.today/x0PjJ

From the post:

>Everybody hates working on legacy projects, myself included. As fate would have it, one landed in my lap recently. While working on it didn’t make me hate legacy projects any less, it did help me get a deeper understanding of the processes and practices we use today.

Yeah, one of the reasons I am hired is to un-fuck stuff that other people have spent a lot of time fucking up. I don't love it but I am good at it. Or at least the places that hire me and pay me to do it seem to think so. I know I posted this to /s/programming even though I don't consider myself a dev. The article leans in that direction. Don't forget the people that have to run that garbage code or on what they do to make it work better either or figuring out what is broken before you do (sometimes) or yelling at you in a bug report. I do have a personal hate for "Agile" though. Mostly because I have never seen it work properly in practice. I guess I have not worked at enough places yet then? Archive: https://archive.today/x0PjJ From the post: >>Everybody hates working on legacy projects, myself included. As fate would have it, one landed in my lap recently. While working on it didn’t make me hate legacy projects any less, it did help me get a deeper understanding of the processes and practices we use today.

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[–] • 2 pts

I've spent 4 decades making new software projects and maintaining and/or fixing legacy projects. I have seen so much change in those decades but ultimately nothing seems to change when it comes to how we deal with new and old code. I have been subjected to every methodology that has existed in software development. Waterfall, RAD/JAD, Rational/RUP, MSF, Extreme Programming, Agile, Theory of Constraints...the list goes on. They all have their failures and some good parts too. Ultimately I think Waterfall was the best, despite the hate it gets, because it produced the best software projects throughout history. Agile was DOA from the beginning. I hate Agile.

Over time you find what works best and make your own hybrid unless you are forced to use the methodology du jour. I play along on the surface but do my own thing and it works out better than the adopted standard, but it took decades of work to refine my methods to be a good fit for everything. I too get paid to un-fuck things but I also write a lot of new stuff. I have a bunch of legacy code still in use at various organizations because it still works and does what is needed. It surprises me to discover company XYZ is still using project ABC 15 years or more after I wrote it. But that's not a bad thing for me because they can pay me a lot more to write a replacement system if they need it. :)

But to your point, you are correct. Senior means more than just years of programming. It also means years of blood, sweat and tears maintaining or fixing your predecessor's shitty code. I reached senior a long time ago but I still think my grey beard could get a little more grey and a few feet longer before I feel truly senior.

[–] • 2 pts

Yeah, that about fits with everything I have seen myself. I often get thrown the "legacy stuff" since no one else is willing to touch it or they are afraid of how much worse they might make it. Thus the "I am paid to un-fuck" the situation.

Time + knowledge = wisdom (at least for most). Not "How much XXXX have you shipped".