• Eager Eagle@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Yup, the longer you wait to update something, the higher the cost to eventually do that. I hate the “if ain’t broke don’t fix it” adage because of this. If I am the one who will eventually need to update it, you bet I will be “fixing” it more often than I have to.

      • FizzyOrange@programming.dev
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        10 days ago

        Yeah “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” is code for “if it isn’t completely awful don’t bother improving it”. That’s how you end up with everything being just on the verge of broken.

        • Eager Eagle@lemmy.world
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          10 days ago

          yeah, that phrase grinds my gears. If you heard from a supposed professional that they only do the bare minimum to get a pass, you’d never hire their services. It’s at best disrespectful with your colleagues who give a shit and have standards.

    • codeinabox@programming.devOP
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      11 days ago

      My takeaway from the article was, in the author’s own words, “start with debt in code you’re about to change anyway”. That’s not to say you shouldn’t tackle technical debt in code that isn’t changing, rather it’s lower priority.