[ne9xt]

it’s kind of frustrating, cracking open old code for a change or bug fix and seeing some really gross helper function you have to use. the temptation to take 30 minutes and refactor is too irresistable sometimes.

I do agree with the basic idea of the article though. maintenance/sustaining = touch the code as little as you can (helps with diffs) greenfield = take the time to make it right for as long as you can

[jniedrauer]

As I gain experience, I find myself more and more just gritting my teeth and using the nasty function as-is.

The business types don't care. What they care about is having something to sell.

The engineers who are even capable of understanding what I'm doing don't care because they've got their own deadlines on a totally unrelated part of the codebase. They probably won't even work here any more by the time someone has to touch this code again.