maintenance
- The computer is a machine, but a codebase is an organism
- The organic nature of code manifests itself in the dual forces of growth and decay
- Building software isn't like assembling a car, it's more like tending a garden
- Successful management of a codebase consists in defending its long-term health against the dangers of decay and opportunistic growth
- it's far better to fail fast (and loud), in order to call immediate attention to the problem so it can be fixed
decay
Code rot.
- started when deps are messed with
- staved off by tiny interventions (moving away from deprecated API and such)
- number of deps is a risk factor
- time since the last refactor is a good tell
growth
- unbounded growth is bad
- code needs to be tended, or weeds will fester
code smells
[ tbi ]