31 replies

1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 3 min later

   some folks do want to do maintenance, apparently

2. Charlie Bluesky 4 min later

   still waiting on 12ty after all these years

   1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 5 min later

      maybe in the year 20ty

3. Jim Nielsen Bluesky 8 min later

   although the versioning doesn't quite match up, this one's been going for 4+ decades.

   www.npmjs.com/package/zach...

   1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 10 min later

      my kids will inherit my tech debt 😅

      1. Jim Nielsen Bluesky 23 min later

         lol I think about this sometimes as I watch family go through the inheritance process

         "anybody want grandma's old hope chest? ANYONE? PLZ SOMEONE TAKE IT"

         that'll be my kids, "anybody wanna deal with dad's websites? ANYONE?!?"

         1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 26 min later

            we need website beneficiaries (not family-based) 😅

            1. Jim Nielsen Bluesky 32 min later

               "Dad's trust only lays out who gets his websites and GitHub account. There's nothing in here about his bank account or real estate holdings..."

               1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 35 min later

                  are we kidding? shout out to docs.github.com/en/account-a... 👼🏻

4. Shaw Bluesky 10 min later

   Tell that to some of the 13 year old Rails code powering CodePen... 😅

   1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 11 min later

      …oh no

      1. Shaw Bluesky 1 hr later

         Honestly, that's probably some of the more maintainable code of the whole system. The 13 year old jQuery code powering parts of the Editor is the real beast.

         1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 1 hr later

            have you thought about converting it to use prototype.js

            1. Shaw Bluesky 1 hr later

               We're in the process of migrating to MooTools to keep IE6 compatibility.

               1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 1 hr later

                  ah so the point is moot (ools) then

5. psarant Mastodon 29 min later

   @zachleat You are certainly kinder to future-you, when you realize you’ll have to maintain the code you add today.

   1. Zach Leatherman Mastodon 31 min later

      @psarant I love the idea that doing the hard thing (but the right thing) builds *momentum* instead of tech debt

      1. psarant Mastodon 8 hr later

         @zachleat Oh that’s interesting. I haven’t heard it expressed that way before. I’ve seen some energy towards changing the language around “tech debt”. Momentum is a new one for me. I’ll have to think about this a bit more thank you.

6. cultured nyc 🇺🇦 Mastodon 48 min later

   @zachleat also what it feels like to be a musician

   1. Zach Leatherman Mastodon 2 hr later

      @culturednyc ooh, I like that thought!

7. Oliver Turner Bluesky 1 hr later

   Yes and… there’s something even more rewarding about updating a codebase written in transitional technologies like Handlebars and Sass to HTML and CSS

8. Cervantes Xavier 🇨🇦 Bluesky 2 hr later

   One of the greatest moments in my coding life was when I went back to rewrite a core component of my years long coding project to add some functionality, and found the comment

   /*Use this code block instead when you decide to expand functionality*/

   Thank you, past me.

   1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 2 hr later

      you made a good choice and were rewarded for it 🏆

9. Thorsten Ohl Bluesky 4 hr later

   Agreed, but sometimes it's scary to meet my 20y younger self: "What was that guy thinking???"

   1. Zach Leatherman Bluesky 4 hr later

      What an opportunity to fix your mistakes from 20 years ago!!

      1. Thorsten Ohl Bluesky 5 hr later

         Not always easy in a large codebase that turned out to be not as neatly modularized as originally envisioned...

10. Private reply Bluesky 6 hr later
11. L. David Baron Bluesky 7 hr later

    Most of the people you know who work on browser engines probably agree with this sentiment. (But there are also many people who are happier writing new code.)

12. Matthew Mastodon 15 hr later

    @zachleat https://github.com/mysociety/writetothem/commit/30b86a6 is my first commit to that repository, from 2004 (so in CVS at the time), still keeping it going now 🙂

13. d3v1an7 Mastodon 2 days later

    @zachleat the work you put into 11ty and webc makes (most) of my working days as joyful and fun and challenging and interesting as work can be. so, thank you!

    1. Zach Leatherman Mastodon 2 days later

       @d3v1an7 you’re very welcome!!