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0 pointsG3rn0ti1y ago0 comments

As an outsider of any reasonably large application can you really ever expect to grasp 200 random lines of code in any language?

Maintenance programming is all about understanding the software‘s context and implicit design or a model thereof — even if it is a 20 year old patch work.

Young developers tend to be amazed when I find the source of an obscure bug in our 1M lines of Perl code application as a senior. But the thing is, I just happen to „get the application“ and developed intuition about its inner working. It’s rarely of knowing Perl particularly well. The thing could have been written in TCL or even Brainfuck — with a working model of your software in your head (not with the memory of the total code base, mind you) you will eventually find the problem in a piece of software written in any language.

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folmar1y ago

If you get a typically-structured Java/Spring application then often yes. By typically structured I mean domain objects, DTOs, service layer, controller layer, view layer. The idiomatic use of dependency injection frees the mind of the reader from understanding all the dependencies in code, just use an @Autowired class you want and someone part has the knowledge to configure it and does so.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointsG3rn0ti1y ago0 comments

As an outsider of any reasonably large application can you really ever expect to grasp 200 random lines of code in any language?

Maintenance programming is all about understanding the software‘s context and implicit design or a model thereof — even if it is a 20 year old patch work.

0 comments

folmar1y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse