Maintainable

Julia López: Code Tells a Story—Even the White Spaces

Feb 25, 2025
Join Julia López, a Senior Software Engineer at Harvest, as she shares her passion for code refactoring and the significance of white spaces and variable names in understanding legacy systems. Julia discusses her experience revamping Harvest's billing system, balancing stakeholder expectations, and the challenges of transitioning while supporting various teams. She emphasizes the importance of mentorship in navigating refactoring, communication in remote settings, and strategies for advocating technical debt reduction, making for insightful takeaways.
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INSIGHT

Keys to Maintainable Software

  • A reliable test suite and an engineering culture valuing refactoring are key to maintainable software.
  • Allowing time to improve and refactor code builds a strong foundation for future changes.
ANECDOTE

Mentoring Through Code History

  • Julia mentors newer developers to feel empowered changing old code without fear.
  • She leads by example showing how even white spaces and naming reflect a system's history.
ANECDOTE

Three-Year Billing Overhaul

  • The billing system overhaul took three years, allowing extensive refactoring and rewrite.
  • They balanced time-sensitive features with deep rewrites for technical debt reduction.
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