Legacy Code Rocks

Building useful software requires more than just knowing how to write code. It demands curiosity to understand the problem which the software is supposed to resolve. It also requires the willingness to understand the people - not only those who will use it but also those who are building this software with you!  Today we talk with Dawn Ahukanna , the design principal and front-end architect at IBM...

Working together in a team requires a lot of emotional intelligence, adaptability, and empathy. Bringing two teams working together after acquisition and a merger might seem like requiring superpowers on top of that.  Today we talk with Matt Dixon , the founder, and CEO of Front Range Systems . Matt is a tech executive helping newly acquired technology businesses create a unified culture within th...

TypeScript has been around for quite a while, and its popularity speaks for itself.  It has never been more important to understand how to gradually and sustainably shift to TypeScript within the existing code-base.  Today we talk with Sam Lanning , an independent software contractor in the humanitarian sector with many years of experience at GitHub and Semmle. Sam's vast experience in using TypeS...

We often use real-life metaphors to make software development concepts more approachable and understandable, especially for the people just entering the field. Sometimes, however, the reverse approach could help a seasoned coder to cope with the real world.  Today we talk with Casey Watts , the author of Debugging Your Brain , a clear applied psychology, and a concise self-help book. The human bra...

Many programming concepts seem too complex and intimidating to outsiders. That is perhaps the main reason why writing code remains such an exclusive profession, even in the age where virtually everything depends on a written code! But does everything have to be so complicated?  Today, we talk with Sy Brand , Microsoft C++ Developer Advocate, and a specialist for compilers and debuggers for embedde...

Imagine if you could perform static analysis, find bugs, and enforce code standards in more than seventeen languages with a single tool. Imagine if you could scan your code with more than 1,000 community pre-written rules and if you could easily add your own rules to match your code perfectly. Imagine if you could then flag the issues and get results in pull requests, Slack, or anywhere else witho...

Many IT industry giants (including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Uber, Airbnb, and Twitter) employ gigantic monorepos to scale build systems and version control software. Although only recently named, monorepos have been around for several decades.  Today we talk with Darko Fabijan . Darko is the co-founder of Semaphore CI , where he and his team explore new tools and ideas that improve developers'...

A big part of dealing with legacy systems is not on the level of software architecture but interior design. The code needs to be welcoming for people who use it and maintain it, free of clutter, clean and tidy.  Today we talk with Ester Daniel Ytterbrink . Ester Daniel is a coder who likes to think about how people work as a group to create great software sustainably. They have a blog ( Chocolate...

The first step to mastering any skill is demystifying it. However, this is not easy to achieve on your own, and often masters of the craft around you are not as helpful as you would hope. It is easy to forget how it is to be a novice once we achieve expertise in some field, and this leads many of us to lose the ability to introduce the craft to the incoming forces patiently and in simple terms.  T...

We talk a lot about software on this show. But in this episode, we steer away from our usual practice and look at one piece of hardware that every computer user is in touch with the most. Yes, it is a keyboard!   Today we talk with Jesse Vincent - a software developer turned hardware manufacturer. Jesse is best known for his work with the Pearl programming language and the ticket-tracking system R...

We seldomly dive deep into discussing any particular programming language on this show. However, today we are making an exception, and we talk with Chrissy LeMaire about PowerShell. Chrissy is a GitHub star, double Microsoft MVP, and a co-author of the book Learn dbatools in a Month of Lunches . She is currently a blue teamer who uses PowerShell to make the world more secure. Chrissy shares some n...

We behave with the cloud as a subset of technology like a teen who just learned how to drive. We are at the point where capabilities have far exceeded the ability to comprehend consequences. We have the power in our hands to change our life and other people's lives both in positive and negative ways. However, we lack the experience to foresee these results.  Today we talk with Bobby Allen, Vice Pr...

Technical debt is a recurring theme of this show. We talk about it almost as often as it pops out in any legacy code! Today we go back to discussing technical debt with Jim Humelsine . Jim has been a software development professional since 1985. Jim's passion is design patterns, but he recently expanded his interest to software practices and procedures. Jim is also an economics and especially game...

Many legacy systems lack adequate test coverage. They might not have much coverage at all, or the existing tests might be inefficient or paint a wrong picture about the stability of the system. Enhancing test coverage in legacy applications is a complex task with many pitfalls.  Today we talk with Floyd Hilton , a software developer with many years of experience in multiple domains, including semi...

There has been a noticeable uptick in the adoption of public cloud providers. At the same time, the voices advocating for the abandonment of traditional data centers are getting louder. Keeping servers around to keep running their business might be overkill for many companies. For others, it could be the only reasonable choice. And even if you decide to transition to the cloud, how do you know whi...

Common Lisp was written in the 80s as a kind of an amalgam of the existing Lisps at the time. To make sure the Common Lisp would stay relevant, it was made backward compatible so that existing legacy systems could run on it. One thing in common to these big old systems like Lisp is a lot more mutation, and the cool thing about this legacy is that it has a baked experience – it learns and it has le...

Software engineers perceive that technology advances in an orderly, linear fashion. This makes the novelties very attractive. However, the reality is that we tend to go through technology in cycles.  Recognizing this is crucial for understanding how to make the right technical decisions while preserving the value of the old technology.  Is it better to build from scratch or build on what you have?...

For most teams, dependency freshness is a pain that is often ignored. "If it works –don't change it" is the prevailing attitude, but as a lot of applications become web-focused, dependencies inevitably start gaining traction. Why does dependency freshness matter, and how do we proactively stay on top of it?  Today we present Freshli - the dependency freshness tool we have been working on. The micr...

When developers talk about what they find exciting, they usually talk about new things. Very little content is about the actual job, about working in the existing system. When they do talk about legacy, they usually focus on how much they hate it. Where does that animosity come from and how do we confront it? Today we get to the bottom of it with Barry O'Sullivan . Barry is a modern web developmen...

We like to think that technology is our objective and neutral assistant, our faithful lieutenant constrained with science and armed with cold, hard data. But this is incorrect. Technology reflects the attitudes of humans who created it. It contains our biases and our preconceived notions. It reflects who we are while distorting our perception of who we think we are, transforming our impulse for bi...

Many analytical models can help you to measure some aspects of the quality of your codebase. However, only a combination of these models can give you complete information about your code's integrity and the real-world necessity for its improvement. Today we talk with Dan Sturtevant , the CEO of Silverthread Inc and a Technology and Operations Management Researcher at the Harvard Business School ....

Ruby on Rails is a fast-moving community and it is not always easy to keep up with it. Given the efficiency of the framework, however, it is well worth trying. Today we talk to Robby Russell , creator of Oh My Z Shell , host of Maintainable software podcast, and CEO of Planet Argon – a software consultancy that helps organizations improve their existing Ruby on Rails applications. We chat with Rob...

Security is a big topic with many facets, and this is especially true for microservices. Microservices deployment has been around for some time, but security didn't get much attention from developers – they simply trusted the network. Today we talk with Prabath Siriwardena and Nuwan Dias , authors of Microservices Security in Action * and deputy CTOs of the WSO2 , on the state of microservices sec...

In the last episode of 2020, we took a stroll through the little known corridors of coding history with Clive Thompson . Clive is a technology and science journalist for the New York Times Magazine, Wired, Smithsonian, and many other outlets. In his new book Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World *, he explores how computer programmers - the people who are increasingly run...

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic changed the way we work and communicate, some people expected remote work to become more popular. The thought was, however, that the transition will be done by choice, not by force!  Today we talk with Johanna Rothmann , a management consultant, speaker, and author of over a dozen reference books on management, agile, team-building, and software development. Just...