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By, Katrina Owen It's not your fault. Code rots. We don't hold entropy against you, but we expect you to give a damn. This story is about code that brings new meaning to the word 'legacy'. The accidental discovery of this body of code provoked a moral crisis. I wanted to pretend I hadn't seen it, yet I couldn't justify tiptoeing quietly away. This talk examines the dilemmas we face when balancing our choices today with their cost tomorrow. It's not your fault. Even so, it is your responsibility. Help us caption & translate this video! http://amara.org/v/G0HR/
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In the talk "Here Be Dragons" by Katrina Owen, presented at BathRuby 2015, the speaker addresses the complexities and moral dilemmas developers face when maintaining legacy code and the need for responsibility in software development. The central theme revolves around the inherent entropy of code and the challenges of balancing immediate fixes against potential future consequences. Owen shares her experience with a particularly mundane bug in a gossip-sharing application, illustrating how seemingly minor issues can reveal deeper problems within a codebase. Key Points Discussed: - **Encountering a Bug:** Owen recounts a personal experience fixing a bug related to email notifications in a gossip-sharing application, which evolved into an exploration of the deeper issues within the code. - **Moral Responsibility:** Despite being able to walk away after making a quick fix, Owen emphasizes the ethical responsibility developers have towards their code, driven by a fear of unaddressed issues. - **Code Quality Examination:** The talk critiques the lack of testing, dead code, and confusion caused by poor documentation and coding practices in the legacy code. - **Impact of Defective Code:** The speaker argues that when good developers experience rushed timelines and unclear requirements, it often leads to the creation of lower-quality code, emphasizing situational pressures over individual failings. - **Cooperation vs. Defection:** Using a game theoretical approach, Owen discusses how decisions in code quality can be seen through cooperation (striving for better coding practices) versus defection (neglecting best practices), ultimately influencing the overall quality of the software. - **Conclusion on Software Development:** The talk concludes with a call for developers to recognize their contributions to code quality, urging them to consider each commit as a choice between cooperation and defection in the ongoing effort to improve code standards and reduce entropy. Main Takeaways: - Developers have a moral obligation to confront and improve legacy code, instead of ignoring underlying issues. - Choices made during development have long-term impacts, and fostering a culture of code quality can lead to more stable and maintainable software. - The accountability lies not just in fixing immediate problems but also in understanding the broader implications of our coding practices.
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