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by bit_logic
2015 days ago
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One of the most powerful benefits from being there since the start is the complete confidence in ripping out and deleting obsolete code later. Even good developers new to the project are afraid to do this, and they should be since it's very risky without the full context. The natural trajectory for a project is to keep adding features until it collapses from its own weight. Only the long tenure developer can fight this and revitalize a project by removing the useless excess. |
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Feature work is such a smaller part of my individual contributions at this point - I do some here and there so I don't get too out of touch with the front end and user experience - but much of my coding work these days is reworking existing core functionality.
Thankfully we understand the necessity of deep maintenance for our system that we fully expect to still be running in 10 more years, but even with that it's damned hard to keep up. I can't imagine having developers come and go every couple/few years and little or no leadership support for code and systems improvement.