When does legacy code first appear?
How does working at the limits of our abilities (or when we are constrained) affect the quality and supportability of the code we write?
I was struck by these thoughts while browsing the subreddit for the Advent of Code. There was one thread called “AOC 2022 is destroying my self-confidence, how do I improve?”
It got me thinking:
1. Why do we push ourselves hard or get to feel like a failure with what is only supposed to be a bit of fun?
2. How often do we (as programmers) feel like this in our day jobs? And what is the result in the code?
This is a perfect example of how social interactions help, hinder and define our programming abilities in any given context.
In any commercial sense, we never code in a vacuum.
Someone else depends on our code. The user, the admin, the DevOps, the operator, our programming friends.
When can legacy code appear? From another’s perspective, perhaps the very moment we write it.