this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
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I inherited code that contained files that were last updated in 1997
That isn’t a bad thing. On the contrary, according to the open-closed principle, you should strive for writing code you never have to touch again.
There’s a difference between ” it hasn’t changed because it doesn’t need to be changed” and ” it hasn’t changed because it’s impossible to predict the impact of any change, and no one wants to be responsible for things breaking”.
I was once spelunking a file that hadn't been touched in like 7 years, and there was a weird line where it was adding 2 to the index for seemingly no reason. The comment was like
// Sam: not sure why this is off by 2 here. See ticket #12345 for discussionWhatever issue tracking software it was referencing was no longer used, so that ticket was gone, and who TF is Sam?