this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2025
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The Great Software Quality Collapse: How We Normalized Catastrophe (techtrenches.substack.com)
submitted 2 days ago by onehundredsixtynine@sh.itjust.works to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

but you cannot change the parent DB query.

Why not?

This sounds like the "don't touch working code" nonsense I hear from junior devs and contracted teams. They're so worried about creating bugs that they don't fix larger issues and more and more code gets enshrined as "untouchable." IMO, the older and less understood logic is, the more it needs to be touched so we can expose the bugs.

Here's what should happen, depending on when you find it:

  • grooming/research phase - increase estimates enough to fix it
  • development phase - ask senior dev for priority; most likely, you work around for now, but schedule a fix once feature compete; if it's significant enough, timelines may be adjusted
  • testing phase/hotfix - same as dev, but much more likely to put it off

Teams should have a budget for tech debt, and seniors can adjust what tech debt they pick.

In general though, if you're afraid to touch something, you should touch it, but only if you budget time for it.

[–] lightnegative@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

"Don't touch working code" stems from "last person who touched it, owns it" and there's some shit that it's just not worth your pay grade to own.

Particularly if you're a contractor employed to work on something specific

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 hours ago

I get that for contractors, get in and get out is the best strategy.

If you're salary, you own it regardless, so you might as well know what it does.

[–] ieGod@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That budget is the key. You have to demonstrate/convince the purse holders first. This isn't always an easy task.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 hours ago

Fair. If that's not possible, I'll start looking for another job, because I don't want to deal with a time bomb that will suddenly explode and force me to come in on a holiday of something to fix it. My current company allocates 10-20% of dev time to tech debt, because we all know it'll happen, so we budget for it.