Legacy Code Rocks

How has COVID-19 affected legacy code based systems, and what do we do to address the issue? Today we talk with Joao-Pierre Ruth , a technology journalist at InformationWeek where he covers DevOps and cloud computing. Joao-Pierre gives us his insights on the topic that inspired his recent article " COBOL, COVID-19 and Coping with Legacy's Tech-debt ". After listening to the episode, connect with J...

Knowing how to prioritize tasks and how to eliminate unnecessary assignments is a crucial skill for successful project management. The more complicated project is, the less obvious its priorities are. If only there were a tool that could help us navigate through this complexity. Today we talk with Jason C. McDonald , CEO, and co-founder of MousePaw Media , about Quantified Task Management , the to...

We often talk about the makers and menders dichotomy on this show. But we rarely dived deep into the dynamics of collaboration between these two groups of creatives. Today we talk with Brandon Lewis and Luke Rabin , co-founders of BLDR , a digital agency specialized in creating UI/UX designs, technical docs, and developer teams. Building on the immense contributions of behavioral economics, Brando...

As menders working with legacy code, we are focused on identifying and reducing technical debt. But how much easier this task would be if the creator of the code or the previous maintainer left us some breadcrumbs to follow? A simple note on the rationale for a particular decision they have made or a warning about interconnected lines of code would take us a long way! Today we talk with Andrea Gou...

Most, if not all, of the legacy projects feature monolithic application architectures. However, moving to containers can bring many benefits: consistency down the pipeline, no-touch deployment, better support for decomposing the monolith - to name just a few. Today we talk with our own Ben Johnson . Ben is the lead code whisperer at Corgibytes and a developer with over 20 years of experience. We c...

Our Legacy Code Rocks community is turning five this year. To mark this exciting milestone, we decided to catch up with Woody Zuill , our frequent guest, and a person who always manages to teach us something new and exciting. Woody is best known for introducing mob programming to the world, and so we kick-off the show by discussing mob programming in the age of COVID-19. However, as it is always w...

Innovation is the hottest prize in the business. It attracts the most attention. It sells stocks in a blitz. It also distracts from what matters the most - maintaining, caring for, and upkeeping what we have already invented. Today we talk with Lee Vinsel , an assistant professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences , and Andy Russell , pr...

When you build a house, you first build its foundations. This is what ensures its durability. The same stands for writing code - if written upon strong foundations, it will not be blown away by the first wind of change. The best way to achieve this is to think proactively. Today we talk with PJ Hagerty, the founder of devrelate.io , organizer of DevOps Days Buffalo , a developer, writer, speaker,...

As we are going through a racial injustice reckoning here in the United States, each of us needs to look in the mirror, actively seek information, and find a way to contribute to a more just future. We can't talk about fixing code before we talk about the neglected voices in the process of building and mending that very code. Today we talk with Bryan Liles , a senior staff engineer at VMware , a t...

Staying agile is most important in times of crisis. After more than four months of Covid-19 disruption, it is clear that we are going through one of those era-defining moments. As the crisis drags on, we need to adapt and be more agile than ever. Today we talk with our own Andrea Goulet, Corgibytes CEO and Legacy Code Rocks co-host, about big changes we are going through here at Legacy Code Rocks...

Imagine if there were a tool to help you measure your code's complexity, coverage, and smells, blend it all together and present you with an average score assessing your technical debt. SkunkScore is precisely such a tool. Today we talk with Ernesto Tagwerker, founder of Ombu Labs and fastruby.io—and the developer of the SkunkScore—about software maintenance and how to use SkunkScore to identify t...

The need for speedy delivery is the reality of contemporary business. The requirements of modern software development are no different. However, when writing software we are making decisions based on knowledge, and finding knowledge often takes time. This is where we turn to software documentation, only to find it frustrating, incomplete, obsolete, or misleading. Today we talk with Cyrille Martrai...

There are many causes of technical debt - unknown or ill-defined requirements, business pressures to deliver fast, procedural deficiencies during development, and many more. These are often just manifestations of a larger problem - lack of understanding due to limitations of natural language and inability to predict future social and technical developments. Today we talk with Einar W. Høst , a pro...

Do you ever feel like we are entering the age of democratization of software development? Do you fear that the platforms enabling novices with little coding experience to develop software applications are commoditizing your service as a developer? Today we talk with James Augeri , a serial entrepreneur, Techstars alumni, U.S. Airforce veteran, and a founder of Jingle , where he is working on makin...

When dealing with legacy code, it is easy to forget that the pipeline to deploy that code could be just as much "legacy' as the code itself. So how do you puzzle your way through resurrecting the pipeline, and how do you handle a legacy application from a CI/CD pipeline standpoint? Today we talk with Laura Santamaria , a LogDNA's development advocate, and DevOps practitioner. She shares with us th...

How many pairs of eyes are needed to ensure the quality of a newly written code? When do you send your code to an impartial reviewer? Is a review always necessary? Today we talk with Pranay Suresh , a Silicon Valley startup expert, a former software engineer at Tesla, and a mentor and angel investor about code reviews. Pranay gives us a few tips on how to approach code reviews, both from the persp...

Switching from a monolithic architecture to microservices has become an accelerating trend these days. Many tech leaders have already successfully transitioned, and many others are planning to follow suit. But is it always wise to abandon the monolith and adopt the services approach? And if the answer is yes, how to make the transition least painful? Today we talk with Rob Zuber , a veteran of sof...

Coding with empathy is one of the Corgibytes' core principles, underlying everything we talk about on this show. But not since 2016 have we taken a step back and dived deep into the subject of empathy, what it means, and how to practice it. Today we talk with Indi Young, a speaker, writer, and UX researcher dedicated to empowering makers and menders to know their problem space through empathy and...

When repaying debt, it helps to know how big it is. The same holds for technical debt. The problem is: how do you measure it? Today we talk with Daniel Okwufulueze , a technology leader, programming polyglot, writer, and senior engineer at dunnhumby . Daniel helps us define technical debt and tells us how to quantify it without falling into usual pitfalls while doing so. When you finish listening...

The code is predictable. Binary. It either works, or it doesn't. Working with people is much messier. Their actions and reactions are not easy to predict. Or are they? Today we talk with Claudius Mbemba , a tech leader, public speaker, and the CTO of Neu , about personality tests. How useful they are, which one to choose, is it enough to use only one, and how to use them to increase the productivi...

To paraphrase Lewellyn Falco, when one person is programming, it is that person's best ideas that are being encoded into the software; when two people are programming together, you get the best ideas from both of them. Today we are talking with Harald Reingruber, a software engineer who specializes in visual and spatial computing, about his upcoming pair-programming tour in the US and Canada. Wher...

The easiest way to make your team members feel happy is to give them a sense of personal growth. By expanding their capacities, they exponentially increase the productivity of the team while strengthening their own sense of purpose. On today's episode, we chat with Kwame Thomison. After a decade building software and software teams for companies like Facebook and Asana, Kwame set out as a leadersh...

It's never about what you don't know. It's the difference you can bring to the table that matters. Today we talk with A.J. Rendo , a theatre director, a philosophy major, and an enthusiast historian turned software developer. A.J. gives us a wild ride through his story — how can you switch from directing theatrical shows to maintaining legacy software responsible for managing billion dollars a day...

In a modern fast-moving business environment, we are obsessed with quantitative measurements. But without qualitative data, we might get the wrong impression and incentivize bad behavior. Today we talk with Dalia Havens , Vice-President of engineering at Netlify, about selecting appropriate metrics to measure outputs of your team, increase its productivity, and, most importantly, keep it happy. Bu...

Most of the time, we focus on a specific aspect of software development and maintenance and try to see how these small pieces fit in the big picture of working with legacy code. Not today, however. Today we talk with Abraham Marín-Pérez , an extremely active Java developer with more than ten years of experience in various industries, about THE big picture and why legacy code rocks! Abraham is the...