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Comment by balderdash

19 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.

That's really interesting.

What have been achieved using this port?

And how did you make sure the port is correct?

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.

  • Honest question: does that even remotely matter, or is it an outdated prior?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.

    • 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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