Comments on: “total cost of owning a mess” https://www.selikoff.net/2008/09/22/total-cost-of-owning-a-mess/ Java/J2EE Software Development and Technology Discussion Blog Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:59:04 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: jeanne https://www.selikoff.net/2008/09/22/total-cost-of-owning-a-mess/comment-page-1/#comment-334 Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:59:04 +0000 http://www.selikoff.net/blog/?p=459#comment-334 Kevin: You raise a good point about the importance of understanding both the code and problem domain.

Jean: And the best thing is when you can get management to agree!

]]> By: jean https://www.selikoff.net/2008/09/22/total-cost-of-owning-a-mess/comment-page-1/#comment-333 Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:01:01 +0000 http://www.selikoff.net/blog/?p=459#comment-333 My definition of “stealth refactoring” is the process of refactoring a mess whilst including bug fixes and additional features to the functionality hereby reducing the total amount of time taken over the long run without management’s knowledge.

whew… thats a long sentence.

]]> By: Kevin https://www.selikoff.net/2008/09/22/total-cost-of-owning-a-mess/comment-page-1/#comment-331 Wed, 24 Sep 2008 04:14:32 +0000 http://www.selikoff.net/blog/?p=459#comment-331 What you touch on here is exactly why on the desktop I prefer a pluggable architecture and on the web side like to modularize and organize packages appropriately to “reduce” this sort of code mess. I also am a big proponent of docing code judiciously… I don’t care how good a developer you are and how much you think you don’t need to, you do!

I also think this is why agile development is to a large part a good thing, although getting managers to agree to the process is futile most of the time. Being able to “rewrite” a section of code, or the entire app, may take longer, but it does a couple of important things, especially to those that have been part of the process. Yes, it may take longer to get each rewrite/iteration out, but the team becomes better aware of the problem domain and has a better idea what was wrong last time and where to correct. In a pluggable app you don’t necessarily have to rewrite everything.

Where this really breaks down tho is when you come in to existing code. I don’t think I am alone when I say I want to rewrite code. It allows me to “own” some of it, rather than maintain someone else’s mess. By owning it, I know it. By maintaining someone else’s mess, I don’t know it, so it takes a lot more time to get stuff done. Jumping around code, figuring out what does what, etc.

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