Hacker News with Generative AI: Legacy Code

Haunted Graveyards in Consulting (datosh.github.io)
Popularized by Google[1][2], Haunted Graveyards are pieces of code that, while providing a business value, are so ancient, obtuse, or complex that no one dares enter them.

Software Development, Consulting, Legacy Code

15 points by datosh 55 days ago | 13 comments

The tragedy of running an old Node project (abdisalan.com)
It’s been a long while since I wrote anything on this site. The framework I used was Gatsby which in 2020 was one of the hot ways of getting a good looking blog up and running quickly. With over 41 dependencies, and god knows how many more sub-dependencies, this thing was a beast.

JavaScript, Node.js, Web Development, Software Development, Legacy Code

272 points by abdisalan 71 days ago | 403 comments

Ask HN: Junior dev in charge of rewriting 500k line PHP app. Looking for advice (ycombinator.com)
We are a 4 person company, that makes a web app I'll call Star. Today, Star is 11 years old and showing its age. It was developed entirely by one of the founders, who has no formal training, and the niche industry we serve has changed greatly in the last decade, rendering many of our core abstractions obsolete. In theory, Star follows MVC, but in practice there is no coherent architecture.

Software Development, PHP, Web Development, Legacy Code, Startups

13 points by poncho_romero 78 days ago | 25 comments

Suite smells: testing legacy code (bitfieldconsulting.com)
A friend had just started a consulting gig with a new team, so I asked him, “How are they doing?” He said, “They’re writing legacy code, man.” —Michael Feathers, “Working Effectively with Legacy Code”

Software Development, Legacy Code, Testing

26 points by gus_leonel 93 days ago | 10 comments

NTS (TeX reimplementation in Java from 2001) still compiles under Java 16 (github.com/jamespfennell)

Programming, Software, Java, Legacy Code, Open Source

68 points by wolfi1 221 days ago | 63 comments