Oh I know, that's why I am rebelling! I think words mean very specific things. I know it may seem like unproductive nitpicking, but in my experience the hundreds of discussions I have witnessed and been a part of myself in discussing legacy systems, bringing the pejorative version of the term to the table usually hinders the discussion more than anything, and it is this attitude that greatly contributes to the "software is eating the world" problem we soon to experience with everyone recreating the same library every day instead of reusing existing, proven solutions -- talk about unproductive!
"Back in my day", legacy systems were admired! I mean, heck, they were still there because some team(s) were using them every day, more often than not, they were there because they made money.
As one famous software engineer once said, "'Legacy code' often differs from its suggested alternative by actually working and scaling."
NASA was reusing code written from the 70's all the way up to 2011! Surely there is something in this wonderful land of legacy code that is worth saving? Or how about our operating systems? Full of wonderfully working legacy software that might just need a touch of love, rather than the usual thrashing of "how stupid those other devs were" and a total rewrite, which is what usually happens sadly.
In any case, I think another poster may have touched on it, I think we as engineers should try to refrain from flippantly labeling anything that is essentially "old" (where "old" might be 6 months, 2 years, or 10 depending on the organization) as the pejorative form of "legacy software", and just call it what it is -- bad software, some of which may also be legacy to your organization. But the conflation of the two terms is not helpful and adding to the confusion.
