you never know what you'll find in legacy code
Yesterday, I had a conversation with some of our developers about legacy code and how you never know what you'll find in there. Today, I see that someone else in MacBU has talked about some of the horrors of old old code. Crazy Apple Rumors didn't name their source, but they're reporting that a child was discovered in the Word code. Our new GM Craig was the one who got the poor kid out of there.
Look, I can't really talk about this very much, but I've gotta point out: Word's code is relatively young. Both PowerPoint and Excel have been around for longer. If there was a kid (terrorised by Clippy) living in the Word code, just think about what's happening in the PowerPoint code. We celebrated PowerPoint's 20th anniversary last year, but there was some sombre reflection during that party ...
Comments
Anonymous
January 31, 2008
I don't get it. What does it mean for a kid to be lost in source code?Anonymous
February 01, 2008
So, Nadyne, you're saying he was actually lost in PowerPoint? OK. I'm not sure how that's any better. ;-)Anonymous
February 01, 2008
You guys probably have HOFFA in the PowerPoint code.Anonymous
February 01, 2008
Hoffa actually can be found in the MOSS 2007 code. We discovered him while working on an externally facing web site project last year.