* Jeffrey Thalhammer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2006-03-01 11:05]: >>> By lowering maintenance costs via quality control, managers >>> can avoid (or at least postpone) having to scrap their entire >>> system and rebuild from scratch in India. >> >> I think this is a bit of a stretch. > >I'm in the middle of one such situation. I have inherited a >500k line legacy system that has never been significantly >refactored over its 10 year history and has zero tests. It is >no longer safe or cost-effective to extend this system to meet >future business requirements, so the entire thing is going to be >replaced (although the work is being done in-house, not in >India).
That’s all I meant: it’s a bit of a stretch to throw in that India/outsourcing allusion. I wasn’t disagreeing with the premise of the statement, however. >Eventually, you reach a point when it is >cheaper to just replace it. It has to be *REALLY* awful though. See Joel Spolsky on rewriting from scratch[1] (the gist: *never* do it!). [1]: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html But of course if you do the refactoring all in one batch after 10 years, it’s going to be one honking huge lump sum effort. Doing it iteratively is clearly cheaper. If you want to equip programmers to talk to management, don’t forget to give them this link: http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebt.html Regards, -- Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>
