Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers SE Radio 656: Ivett Ördög on Rewrite versus Refactor
28 snips
Feb 20, 2025 Ivett Ördög, creator of LeanPoker and a thought leader in software development, shares insights on the often contentious choice between rewriting and refactoring code. She challenges the conventional wisdom of avoiding rewrites, discussing conditions for successful large-scale transitions. Ivett also examines the implications of legacy code, the role of technical debt in startups, and strategies for obtaining management support. Their conversation highlights incremental improvement versus large-scale changes, emphasizing customer value during software evolution.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Emergent Complexity and Legacy Code
- Emergent systems in software development become complex and hard to maintain over time.
- Keeping code clean is expensive, leading many successful companies to have legacy codebases.
Legacy PHP Codebase
- A PHP codebase, started by juniors without oversight, became hard to maintain despite later tests.
- Refactoring couldn't fix the fundamentally flawed import process, requiring a rewrite.
Frontend vs Backend Refactoring
- A system's backend was easy to refactor despite lacking tests, thanks to a dashboard.
- The frontend, rushed due to deadlines, was difficult to work with.