Can codebases gracefully age?

Terrible shame. Monstrous shame.

I really need to stop looking at my old code. More than that, I need my old code to work all the time in the face of needs and requirements that didn't exist when I first wrote it. Is that even possible? It isn't when I put it like that.

Probably not. At this point, I'd say "almost certainly not," but it's not like I've seen a whole lot of other projects' codebases (it's not something that I do for fun).

The sad thing is that, not to sound like a monstrously arrogant prick (even though I am), I'm the best developer where I work, by far. When Larry O'Brien made the observation that bad developers are actively counter-productive, it riled some people, but I'm in complete agreement. I'm the best developer at my office (sometimes by more than an order of magnitude) and I'm out-and-out embarrassed by code I wrote six months ago. As in "how the fuck did this shit ever work?" embarrassed. As in "if I ever come across a time machine, I'm going back in time to punch myself in the throat for that mess" embarrassed.

And it only gets worse.

This isn't humility, this is common sense. Microsoft doesn't want me, Google wouldn't fart in my general direction. I'm pretty sure even Fake Steve Jobs would prefer that I not have any Apple products.

I'm certainly no superstar developer (do they really exist in nature?), but even developers way smarter and better than I am have problems with their codebases, especially as they age.

Microsoft's not having such a smooth time of things with Vista - people are hating it so much that they're apparently seriously thinking about doing away with backwards compatibility, regarded by some as the albatross around Vista's neck. But... backwards compatibility is what sells Microsoft products for a whole lot of people. Microsoft's got scary smart dudes working to insure that your old software will keep working, even if it means that old, really questionable stuff, stays in the OS to keep it working.

They must make bunches of money off of it (there's a school of thought that says that the solid support/backwards compatibility fuels the virtuous cycle that keeps large companies from jumping ship from Microsoft), but with the time overrun and backlash about how assy Vista is, they're thinking about sacrificing a cash cow for a restart on the accretion of bugs they have to support in their codebase.

Apple's another company that's got scary smart dudes working for them. Like, even the guys that don't really work for them are scary smart. Another place where I'm sure I'm the janitors are smarter than I am. Even they've got problems with their codebase.

Even there, when it came time for OS X to come out, they broke backwards compatibility with System 9. There was an emulator or something for it (I could swear my PowerBook has it on it) but they made a clean break of it. With point releases of OS X, they brutally deprecate features and functions, leaving developers to clean up their act or not run in the new version.

It's kind of rough, but it's probably also the right way to go. Yes, as a first course, you want to refactor the hell out of your code. But they've accepted the fact that their codebase doesn't age gracefully and when they find really objectionable code, they rip it out as soon as they can. Developers who support Apple apps seem to not mind it all that much (maybe they do?). As for the users... compare and contrast people's reaction to Leopard and Vista.

I just don't think that it's possible for code to age well. Bits and pieces may stand the test of time, but the whole will become a not-so-secret shame. Well, maybe TeX has aged gracefully, but (and no offense intended) nobody who's as smart as Donald Knuth is wasting their time reading this blog.

(click for more bigger brick)

I think that's a totally lovely sight, but if that were software, a bunch of people (the developers supporting it, the people trying to sell it) would be in a lot of pain because that is unfit.

I mean, OK. First it was designed as a brick edifice to hold a building up. Then someone decided that we could slap an ad for Coca-Cola on it. Then a real genius figured "hey, it worked for Coke, why not make it work for Gold Medal", and in the process, they lost sight of what it could reasonably support.

If that were software, I'd be scared to touch it - if I do anything with it, I'm going to lose the Gold Medal ad or the Coca-Cola ad or both or the lovely interplay between the two. I don't want to be responsible for fucking them up.

It only overtly serves one of its intended functions well at this point, when, if it were software, people would be demanding it support all three. At this point, we can all agree that there are simpler ways to support multiple ads (they're called billboards, have you heard of them?) and maybe we should just strip it back to what it can do well (be a brick wall).

In the face of all this, why do I keep developing? In the hope that next time I'll get it right.

So what about you out there - do any of you work on applications that only get better with age?