[foxfluff]

Yeah I can see why that is controversial.

The assumption seems to be that a single developer has agency and is aware of and solely responsible for everything that's going on in the codebase that they may or may not have written.

I've been in a situation where I joined a new company and the code base wasn't looking good but my job as a new hire wasn't to redesigh and rewrite the guts of it. My job was to implement new features, one after another, usually without enough specification to even begin to estimate how long it's going to take when everything they eventually turn out to want is accounted for. The project was already very late. I tried to spend time fixing the foundation and pointing out its problems (including complete lack of tests) but I was told to stop because the customer wasn't paying for that time. The problems I pointed out went ignored.. until they messed things up in production a couple years later.

I'm gonna say they chose rubbish against my advice, and they eventually got what they wanted. Rubbish on top of rubbish, with lots of bugs and slow development.

[throwaway6532]

"We build our computer (systems) the way we build our cities: over time, without a plan, on top of ruins." - Ellen Ullman