As part of my current assignment I see code and tests that are 15 years old (or more), and I only hope that people who wrote this code have become better as software engineers since then. Otherwise there is no hope for humanity.
This is highly debatable. They look better, but whenever I inspect the walls and see what is holding the house together, I just shrug and leave my contact info, because I know I’ll be called to fix the mess.
> ...and building them increasingly feels like magic.
Engineering should not feel like magic to those with a proper education. Otherwise, we are merely practicing alchemy.
Unfortunately the author never even tried to debate. He made a big mental leap from "you can build entire neighborhoods and immediately remodel them with a click" to "the houses are better", with no word on how and why they are they better.
When something feels increasingly like magic it means you understand less and less of it. So in fact you are less and less qualified to say anything about the result.
The author is wowed by the process and the glitz and sees this as an equivalent to "quality of results".
I joined Asobo Studio[1] for an internship back in 2010, and some code there was already nearly 15 years old as they grabbed the remains of Kalisto[2] including the engine/editor. That editor (Pawap) is still used to this day, although the engine (Zouna) has been rewritten (but uses the same data backend as the old code, albeit heavily updated too). This was probably the oldest codebase I worked on at the time.
I have an active project where parts of it still uses on the back-end WebObjects, an ORM framework originally from NeXT and later apple. Over the years parts of it are being rewritten (WebObjects is not threadsafe) but it just keeps running and running processing millions of transactions per week.
> Every file had a comment at the top with the date and the author’s name.
Yeah that is most likely less about pride in the craftsmanship and more likely a reflex from bad source version control software.
EDIT: Also, you know they didnt type these comments by hand right? And that the first code completion systems date back to the 70s, granted it was mostly spell checkers.
As part of my current assignment I see code and tests that are 15 years old (or more), and I only hope that people who wrote this code have become better as software engineers since then. Otherwise there is no hope for humanity.
> The houses are better, and they go up faster...
This is highly debatable. They look better, but whenever I inspect the walls and see what is holding the house together, I just shrug and leave my contact info, because I know I’ll be called to fix the mess.
> ...and building them increasingly feels like magic.
Engineering should not feel like magic to those with a proper education. Otherwise, we are merely practicing alchemy.
> This is highly debatable.
Unfortunately the author never even tried to debate. He made a big mental leap from "you can build entire neighborhoods and immediately remodel them with a click" to "the houses are better", with no word on how and why they are they better.
When something feels increasingly like magic it means you understand less and less of it. So in fact you are less and less qualified to say anything about the result.
The author is wowed by the process and the glitz and sees this as an equivalent to "quality of results".
They're better because they get the business value faster and in a lot more flexible way, which in the end is what all businesses try to achieve.
Sure, quality and security suffer, but you're just to look at any airline's mobile app to see how little quality matters.
I joined Asobo Studio[1] for an internship back in 2010, and some code there was already nearly 15 years old as they grabbed the remains of Kalisto[2] including the engine/editor. That editor (Pawap) is still used to this day, although the engine (Zouna) has been rewritten (but uses the same data backend as the old code, albeit heavily updated too). This was probably the oldest codebase I worked on at the time.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asobo_Studio [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalisto_Entertainment
I have an active project where parts of it still uses on the back-end WebObjects, an ORM framework originally from NeXT and later apple. Over the years parts of it are being rewritten (WebObjects is not threadsafe) but it just keeps running and running processing millions of transactions per week.
Windows 10 shipped with code that is from the 90's. Old does not necessarily mean bad. If it ain't broke.
> If it ain't broke.
It's windows - its broken.
Especially with windows backwards compatibility it's not possible to rewrite it with every release
> The houses are better
Are they? Why? Even in the brick metaphor that doesn't work.
> Every file had a comment at the top with the date and the author’s name.
Yeah that is most likely less about pride in the craftsmanship and more likely a reflex from bad source version control software.
EDIT: Also, you know they didnt type these comments by hand right? And that the first code completion systems date back to the 70s, granted it was mostly spell checkers.
The good old days when people were people and not just IDs
Somewhere people working in Sabre are laughing...
15 years ago people weren't crafting artisanal lines of code to build by dry-stacking.
I bet some of the oldest artifacts in code say "TODO" or "Temporary work-around"...