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0 pointsmarmaduke6y ago0 comments

I went through this, more or less, several years ago. But now I see the uselessly layered app being almost effortlessly retrofitted with new top and bottom layers, keeping only the original middle layer.

If they hadn't layered it, the new retrofitting wouldn't even be possible and the company wouldn't have that contract.

Was it insanity?

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6 comments · 1 top-level

jressey6y ago· 5 in thread

Then you do the layering when you need to. One of my biggest gripes about many engineers is their desire to fix technical debt for no business purpose.

In your example, the team tasked with retrofitting would have introduced the layers when the need to make changes arose.

silveroriole6y ago

What actually happens in a “business purpose focused” company: You tell the boss you need to double the estimate they gave to the customer, so that you can pay the tech debt and add those layers we need. Boss refuses, we need that change now so get it done without fixing the debt, why is the team so incompetent that they didn’t add layers to start with, why didn’t you just fix the tech debt on your own time in quiet periods, we can’t have a ticket for that since it doesn’t add business value, blah blah...

;)

_def6y ago

That's why there's no final answer to "layer: yes or no?". It depends. And as a developer it's your job to guess which decision is more likely to save you time (= money) in the future. There's no way to know the right answer for sure because it depends on further (business) decisions that aren't made yet.

jressey6y ago

What you're describing sounds to me like poor departmental relationships and the typical challenges of lots of people with lots of goals working together.

I sure hope all of y'all's companies are 'business purpose focused' or you're gonna be looking for a new job pretty soon.

celticmusic6y ago

are you claiming this same boss would have given you the time to do it at some other point, thereby delaying something else?

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marmadukeOP6y ago

That's a tall order in a 100k LOC app, for a small team with budget constraints. I'm pretty sure they couldn't do it your way, whereas the prelayered way set them up for a success.

Prelayered raises initial complexity while lowering eventual complexity. It also protects the core layers where the IP is (presumably) from regressions during retrofit.

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