"We ran out of columns" - The best, worst codebase
When I started programming as a kid, I didn't know people were paid to program. Even as I graduated high school, I assumed that the world of "professional development" looked quite different from the code I wrote in my spare time. When I lucked my way into my first software job, I quickly learned ju...
Hasnain says:
“Why was Justin able to do this? Because this codebase had no master plan. There was no overarching design the system had to fit into. No expected format for APIs. No documented design system. No architectural review board making sure things were coherent. The app was a complete and utter mess. No one could ever fix it, so no one tried to. What did we do instead? We carved out our own little world of sanity.
This monolithic app, due to sheer necessity, had grown to be a microcosm of nice, small apps around its edges. Each person, when tasked with improving some part of that app, would inevitably give up untangling that web, and find some nice little corner to build new things. And then slowly update links to point to their nice new stuff, orphaning the old.
This may sound like a mess to you. But it was remarkably enjoyable to work in. Gone were the concerns of code duplication. Gone were the concerns of consistency. Gone were the concerns of extensibility. Code was written to serve a use, to touch as little of the area around it as possible, and to be easily replaceable. Our code was decoupled, because coupling it was simply harder.”
Posted on 2024-08-03T20:52:52+0000