Ask HN: How hard is it to delete old code at your organization and why? - gtirloni
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CM30
Difficult. Not so much because of any interest in hoarding code or what not,
but simply because said code is already deployed on some live service or
another and you really don't want that stuff being broken or potentially
broken just to 'tidy it up a bit'.

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tudelo
Delete old code? Not hard. Getting the ability to delete old code? Harder.
Essentially, going back and refactoring is not possible unless it is linked to
a task in Jira. So, we can't just go and fix code that badly needs some help
unless it is directly or tangentially related to an issue. It's understandable
but frustrating as there is a lot of code and not enough time.

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27182818284
Very difficult:

Technical debt and systems that are older than today's first-year students in
computer science relying on broken implementations. It is work-arounds all the
way down.

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bootlooped
Very difficult. It's due to what I consider a hoarding mentality ("what if we
need it later?") and the misconception that there is no cost to keeping it
around.

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smt88
Can't you solve "what if we need it later?" mentality with git (or some other
append-only repo) and static analysis?

~~~
bootlooped
Yes, but if the code isn't in the current version of production or master,
there is a high probability that nobody will know or remember it even exists.

