

Ask HN: How hard is it to take up an existing project? - espitia

I hired a developer to build an MVP with a very low budget thus the code is a very messy. The app is not very big, it might be a total of 4-5k lines of code (if that counts for anything). Also, communication with this developer was not good at all which is the main reason I want to hire someone different now that I have a bigger budget.<p>So my question is:
How hard is it for a qualified developer to take up an existing project with messy code?
======
mc_hammer
its not -- its called "ramp up" time. its usually about a day or up to 2 weeks
depending on the size of the project before you feel comfortable making
changes. the longest one i ever had was about a year, where after i worked on
a project for a year i was still finding sections of code and saying "oh... i
had no idea our app did this or these files were there!"

usually the dev will just poke around for that time and make small changes and
debug it a few times to see how it works. 4-5k lines i would say 2-3 days tops
before they are comfortable with it.

~~~
sheepmullet
"usually the dev will just poke around for that time and make small changes
and debug it a few times to see how it works. 4-5k lines i would say 2-3 days
tops before they are comfortable with it."

It really depends what the OP means by messy. If by messy he means fairly
straightforward code but not built for easy extension and lacking proper
layout/architecture then a few days is enough.

On the other hand if by messy he means complex code implementing requirements
in a non-obvious way then it could take much longer. I've seen plenty of code
that uses multiple layers of indirection when a simple switch statement would
suffice. Where code that looks like a simple mistake is actually implementing
a critical requirement. Where you have to keep multiple heavily abstracted
domain models in your head at once to understand the code because there is no
clean separation.

It depends on how well you need to understand the code to be able to make
changes. Reasonably well written code can be skimmed at speeds of up to 2500
lines of code an hour and only the core domain objects and algorithms need
more intense study.

On the other hand if you have to understand the entire codebase in order to
change it then 100 lines of code an hour is an upper limit.

So anywhere from half a day to two weeks depending on what you mean by messy.

~~~
espitia
I can understand what most of the code does and I am really an amateur. So I
think it is more along the lines of "fairly straightforward code but not built
for easy extension and lacking proper layout/architecture then a few days is
enough."

Thanks for the input! I appreciate it.

