Legacy Is Sexy

Hi,

Unpopular Opinion Warning: Legacy is Sexy!

To be honest - I didn’t always see it that way.

You probably felt similar.

My first (big) professional project was a legacy application

It wasn’t actually that old. If I remember correctly, it wasn’t even a decade old.

But it felt much older.

This was mainly due to the many inexperienced developers who worked on the application.

I was green behind the ears as well.
The central architectural pattern: The God Class

Marcus Held

How a Release Failed

Hi,

After 9 hours, the decision was clear: We had to roll back.

The first release in almost 1.5 years had failed.

And it was going so well. The meticulous preparation of the past weeks had paid off. Everything was going according to plan. The necessary changes to the VMs went as expected. The major migration was successfully completed after one hour of runtime. The new content files were successfully deployed with the new system. The new CD pipeline ran for the first time on production – and it was successful.

Marcus Held

I ❤️ Releases

Hi,

After almost two years without a release, this Saturday marks the big day.
One of my clients hasn’t released for two years - incredible 🤯

Why? There are many reasons.

The team got entangled in complexity. Significant (and necessary) changes were made.

But these led to numerous side effects. And the goal was to do everything “right.” So, development continued. With one topic completed, five new ones emerged.

Breaking out of this cycle was challenging.

When I joined the team in July, we decided: We need to break this vicious cycle.

Marcus Held

Why Is OOP So Popular?

Hi,

Why do we develop object-oriented today and not functionally?

Why are 7 out of 10 of the most popular programming languages object-oriented? And why is there no purely functional language among them?

Source: Stackoverflow Developer Survey 2023

This question was also asked by Richard Feldman in 2019 . And the backgrounds are interesting.

Of course - as always - it’s complicated.

But one aspect I find particularly interesting.

Marcus Held

ChatGPT Killed my Blog

Hi,

My work methods have changed more in the past year than ever before.

A year ago, OpenAI released ChatGPT.

At the time, I thought the technology was cool, but I didn’t realize how much it would impact my work. And that in less than 12 months.

Today, I use AI for so many things:

• I no longer Google questions; I ask ChatGPT
• GitHub Copilot writes code before I even know what I want to write
• My content (including this one) is proofread by ChatGPT
• I have stock images generated by Midjourney
• My recent presentations were created with ChatGPT
• Even the pirate puzzle for the children’s birthday party is generated by ChatGPT

And this list is far from complete.

Marcus Held