Curious about your take on the Southwest Airlines debacle. I suspect the engineers were probably advocating for modernizing a long time ago, but the business couldn't figure out how to justify it...
Thought provoking post, thanks Mike. I've had to push back on so many of these efforts that were fueled more by engineering purism than business need. There is always a lesson around craftsmanship versus practical reality buried within.
Jan 11, 2023·edited Jan 11, 2023Liked by Mike Fisher
Probably one of the important reasons not to rewrite code is because many corner cases are buried within bug fixes and patches, and especially, we do not adhere to Test-Driven Development. The unseen and unknown are dangerous threats. As the famous article by Joel on Software also highlights, engineers often want to rewrite because reading code is harder than writing it. (https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/)
Curious about your take on the Southwest Airlines debacle. I suspect the engineers were probably advocating for modernizing a long time ago, but the business couldn't figure out how to justify it...
Thought provoking post, thanks Mike. I've had to push back on so many of these efforts that were fueled more by engineering purism than business need. There is always a lesson around craftsmanship versus practical reality buried within.
Probably one of the important reasons not to rewrite code is because many corner cases are buried within bug fixes and patches, and especially, we do not adhere to Test-Driven Development. The unseen and unknown are dangerous threats. As the famous article by Joel on Software also highlights, engineers often want to rewrite because reading code is harder than writing it. (https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/)