> who doesn't like their own Rube Goldberg machines?
Love that. Yes, the 1% (of which I've been a part) often get to control both the structure and rate of change for a large codebase, and in perfecting the fit to themselves they almost inevitably make the experience worse for everyone else.
Right. And I'm not angry at the person who drives the shape of the codebase; working with code designed around a different philosophy than your own is something that one can get used to. But I do feel that the large codebases I've been dealing with were often way too large for what they're doing - even though I couldn't always pinpoint what was superfluous. It's probably just entropy at work, but I can't stop thinking - there must be a better way!
I definitely agree. It's quite easy to look at a large codebase and feel like it's way more complex than it needs to be. That line of thinking often leads to rewrites, and in my experience rewrites often lead to newfound understanding of why the codebase was complex in the first place.
True. I've learned to resist the urge to rewrite code just because it feels too ugly/complex to me - except in the cases where I know I can get tangible benefits (performance, better API) and the scope of rewrite is limited and guarded by extensive tests. It's true that some of the cruft accrues because of changing requirements and the ongoing process of learning that is a good chunk of our work.
And yet accepting that, I still can't shake the feeling that things are more complex than they should be. That also applies to the code I'm writing myself (which is immune from the "rewrite because I could do it better" urge)!
Love that. Yes, the 1% (of which I've been a part) often get to control both the structure and rate of change for a large codebase, and in perfecting the fit to themselves they almost inevitably make the experience worse for everyone else.