Comment by balderdash

20 hours ago

We have an embedded system in one of product offerings that was largely developed using a bunch of “antiquated” technologies (over the past twenty years) and over the past year the two software devs that maintained it have retired. This normally would have big problem, but the entire codebase was re-written, documented, and modernized in a matter of about 3 months (for about $20k in tokens, and a mid level developer spending 50% of their time on it over that period). So it doesn’t surprise me to think a company like Cisco has piles of situations like this.

14 comments

balderdash

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petra  20 hours ago

That's really interesting.

What have been achieved using this port?

And how did you make sure the port is correct?

raizer88  5 hours ago

Every time something like this has been done on my company I follow up with the question: did anyone watched the code to see if the business logic is the same between the two versions? The answer is: but but but automated testing.

Followup question: did anyone read the automated test suite?

Silence.

The software rewrite is shelved.

  • mattlondon  38 minutes ago

    Why do people doing a rewrite need to have read the tests?

    If you have good test coverage, and the tests are reliable, then what's the problem?

    If your engineering culture is bad already and you don't have good test coverage or they're flaky or whatever then that is different. If that is the case, it is probably from smart-ass attitudes like yours asking these "clever" rhetorical questions to derail people trying to improve things that led it to be like that. Do everyone a favour and keep your mouth shut and let people fix things.

  • dannyw  2 hours ago

    Honest question: does that even remotely matter, or is it an outdated prior? All software has bugs.

    The goal and objective is to deliver value for your user/customers; to the speed, reliability, and assurance requirements your market segment expects.

    • raizer88  1 hour ago

      All software has bugs, but right now you have a legacy product in production that works, then you have a rewrite that nobody tested. Do you accepted the risk to yolo it?

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