On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 12:12 PM Mark Randall <mar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 28/08/2019 16:37, Chase Peeler wrote: > > I'm also not the one that built it on the eggshells - I'm just the one > that > > is now in charge of developing the system that someone else left sitting > > eggshells. > > That's a challenge which at some point or another will face all > technical leads. > > You have to go to the people making the decisions and say: > > "Okay, look, we've got ourselves a problem here. We've dug ourselves > into a hole by cutting corners, building up debt, and we've never made > it a priority to fix it, and now it's causing us problems. It's not one > person's fault, it's something that has collectively developed over > time, but the reality is, the problem is there and needs fixing." > > But that's a lie. We have made it a priority to fix things that are broken. I wouldn't consider undeclared variables cutting corners. We've also invested a lot into making sure we aren't building up additional technical debt with the new stuff we're fixing. > And when the manager asks "What problems?" you say something like: > > "The language we use is moving towards a much stricter approach to > handling ambiguous or error prone code. This can only be considered a > good thing, but it is going to mean that a lot of our technical debt is > going to manifest as errors that will stop our site from function..." > > Then the manager will go "Can't we just keep using the version we are on?" > > You reply: > > "We can for a short period, perhaps an extra year or two, but the > reality is that PHP is moving forward, and the current version won't be > supported forever, and even if it were, we would be missing out on major > performance enhancements and new features that could help us to build > new features". > > Or, they go "Maybe we should look at some options that aren't always breaking things. Our other system built with C# has never had that issue." > The manager says: "Lay this out to me" > > You reply: > > "It's like our company car still works, but it no longer tighter meets > emissions standards so they won't let us take it into the city any more" > > In this case, it's like "Our car still works, but, you the left/right arrows on the volume knob have worn off, so, you can't tell by looking at it whether you turn it clockwise or counter clockwise to turn up the volume. > "Crap", the boss replies "Okay, we had best fix that" > > Boss replies "Yea, that sounds like a pretty stupid reason to have to upgrade. We'll wait." > -- > Mark Randall > > -- > PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List > To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php > > -- Chase Peeler chasepee...@gmail.com
