When I was a student I never understood how something like this could happen. “Just rewrite it” I thought, how hard can that be. But working in a corporate environment I now totally understand it. Everything you write will at some point become part of code that, to the fast majority of colleagues, will just be a black box that they’ve never touched and don’t intend to. Despite my urge to test and document everything, I’ve already more than once complained about my own code, only realizing later that I wrote it myself. Often you can still find out what it does, but the “why” gets lost and because of that people are afraid to change it.
Often you can still find out what it does, but the “why” gets lost and because of that people are afraid to change it.
I feel like this is what gets lost whenever documentation is talked about. Yes, you should probably be able to work out what something does by looking carefully at it - but why can be so easily lost!
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it
Until it finally broke and it was too late…
The real question is why did they install a system based on 5.25" floppy disks in 1998 in the first place!?
The 5.25" floppy was surpassed by the 3.5" floppy by 1988 - ten years prior to this systems installation - and by 1998 most new software was being distributed on CD-ROM. So by my reckoning, in 1998 they installed a ‘new’ system based on hardware that was 1.5 generations out-of-date and haven’t updated it in the 26 years since.
You must not be familiar with government procurement
