[jimmy1]

In my opinion, when speaking of "legacy software", we should place a stronger emphasis on the actual meaning of the world legacy rather than the usual pejorative. Meaning that: this software has created a "legacy", in some form or fashion. Whether that legacy was it was used in the past to build the business, it paved the way for some standard or better practice, or it simply outlived it's time.

Downvotes are usually reserved for when a comment is low quality or not relevant to the conversation at hand. Could you please explain if my comment fit into these categories for my own learning? Thank you.

[eitland]

Like it or not but legacy has taken a new meaning in software.

I think it is Michael Feathers who defines it as code without tests in "Working Effectively With Legacy Code".

(That said, I didn't downvote you and I'm also tired of the abuse of the downvote button. I think in your case they downvoted because it seemed like unproductive nitpicking.)

[jimmy1]

Oh I know, that's why I am rebelling! I think words mean very specific things. I know it may seem like unproductive nitpicking, but in my experience the hundreds of discussions I have witnessed and been a part of myself in discussing legacy systems, bringing the pejorative version of the term to the table usually hinders the discussion more than anything, and it is this attitude that greatly contributes to the "software is eating the world" problem we soon to experience with everyone recreating the same library every day instead of reusing existing, proven solutions -- talk about unproductive!

"Back in my day", legacy systems were admired! I mean, heck, they were still there because some team(s) were using them every day, more often than not, they were there because they made money.

As one famous software engineer once said, "'Legacy code' often differs from its suggested alternative by actually working and scaling."

NASA was reusing code written from the 70's all the way up to 2011! Surely there is something in this wonderful land of legacy code that is worth saving? Or how about our operating systems? Full of wonderfully working legacy software that might just need a touch of love, rather than the usual thrashing of "how stupid those other devs were" and a total rewrite, which is what usually happens sadly.

In any case, I think another poster may have touched on it, I think we as engineers should try to refrain from flippantly labeling anything that is essentially "old" (where "old" might be 6 months, 2 years, or 10 depending on the organization) as the pejorative form of "legacy software", and just call it what it is -- bad software, some of which may also be legacy to your organization. But the conflation of the two terms is not helpful and adding to the confusion.

[jacquesm]

I've worked on old but very well maintained code that could easily go another two decades or more. Probably the original writers have long departed this world. But what they put together was put together with either incredible forethought or impeccably kept up-to-date. It was hard to tell which because this stuff was built before the age of version control, which gives you a bit of an idea how old it was. I would consider that 'mature' code, but not necessarily legacy.

Legacy code to me is code that has become hard or even impossible to maintain. Code that people avoid working on, not because it works, but because they are afraid of it.

Sure there are still lessons to be learned from such code, and you will learn those lessons the hard way if you have the temerity to mess with it. But every now and then someone is tasked with fixing a bug or adding a feature that can no longer be avoided and the send-offs are comparable to talking for the last time to people that are about to descend into a mine or something to that effect. Everybody knows there is a good chance we won't be seeing them again for the near future, if the axe of demotivation doesn't cull them from our ranks.

[jacquesm]

I like that definition. Maybe another one: code that nobody knows intimately.

[Clubber]

I've always known it as software that exists and is actively being rewritten, so a mainframe system would be the legacy system while writing a new Windows application to replace it.