Talks
Speakers
Events
Topics
Sign in
Home
Talks
Speakers
Events
Topics
Leaderboard
Use
Analytics
Sign in
Suggest modification to this talk
Title
Description
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/FG6v/
Date
Summarized using AI?
If this talk's summary was generated by AI, please check this box. A "Summarized using AI" badge will be displayed in the summary tab to indicate that the summary was generated using AI.
Show "Summarized using AI" badge on summary page
Summary
Markdown supported
The video "Here be Dragons" by Katrina Owen, presented at the Rocky Mountain Ruby 2013, explores the challenges developers face regarding legacy code and the ethical responsibilities that come with it. Owen recounts the story of a frustrating bug in a gossip application and reflects on the dilemmas of making decisions in software development that affect future code quality. Key Points Discussed: - **Admiration for Bugs**: Owen opens with her love for tackling challenging bugs, contrasting them with tedious ones in legacy systems. - **Gossip Application**: A bug in a feature enabling villagers to share gossip via email exemplifies the struggles with legacy code. She narrates her process of debugging and fixing a broken feature without fully understanding the underlying code. - **Moral Responsibility**: Despite successfully fixing the immediate issue, Owen grapples with the moral implications of her involvement with legacy code. She acknowledges a sense of fear rather than purely altruistic motives driving her to examine further potential problems. - **Game Theory in Development**: She introduces the concept of cooperation versus defection in software development, likening it to game theory where mutual cooperation leads to better outcomes for a development team. - **Lessons from the Code**: Owen walks the audience through her analysis of the broken feature leading to an exploration of poor programming practices, dead code, and mismanaged expectations, highlighting how these contribute to greater technical debt. - **Human Behavior in Development**: She emphasizes how external pressures lead to poor code decisions, urging developers to consider their contributions to the codebase as either fostering order or contributing to its entropy. **Main Takeaways**: - The importance of recognizing the ethical responsibilities developers bear when working with legacy code. - The significance of striving for cooperation over defection in a team setting to enhance code quality. - Reflecting before commits to ensure contributions are more towards improving the codebase rather than exacerbating its decay. Owen concludes by encouraging developers to continuously evaluate whether their actions are moving the code towards greater order or contributing to its disarray, reminding the audience that every decision impacts the future state of the codebase.
Suggest modifications
Cancel
