The activities that occur after deployment of a software system. This includes making modifications to released systems, training, operating, and transitioning to support organizations.
0
votes
0answers
62 views
How to quickly understand a huge piece of code [duplicate]
(This is a general question but I think is important.)
How do you quickly understand a huge piece of code, say, a project with tens of thousands of lines of code (written by other people)?
Are there ...
0
votes
0answers
41 views
Buggy System Management [duplicate]
Recently I acquired support for an existing live system. The system is so BUGGY and every single change would break something else.
I am struggling to manage my time/effort between adding new ...
1
vote
6answers
461 views
Working in a company that does not comment their code at all? [duplicate]
I work for a small software development house (10~ developers, a few product managers and a few support staff) that sells various products and services to organisations internationally through ...
63
votes
27answers
4k views
How do you dive into large code bases?
What tools and techniques do you use for exploring and learning an unknown code base?
I am thinking of tools like grep, ctags, unit-tests, functional test, class-diagram generators, call graphs, ...
0
votes
1answer
75 views
Introducing Fowler's Table Data Gateway to refactor poorly designed systems
I am developing an application, which currently has about 150,000 lines of code. The previous developer didn't really use any discipline when writing code. Application is in production but is ...
19
votes
13answers
1k views
When is it acceptable to NOT fix broken windows?
In reference to broken windows, are there times when refactoring is best left for a future activity?
For example, if a project to add some new features to an existing internal system is assigned to a ...
1
vote
2answers
92 views
How to handle product rebranding in code in a short time frame
We've all been there - a product feature is called "gold", and then a week before launch they decide it is to be called "platinum". Luckily, you had some nous about you so the UI code is easy to ...
2
votes
2answers
124 views
Starting a recurring project from scratch [duplicate]
We have a project that keeps recurring. The client expects us to run a website twice a year and this is happened for the last year and a half. I took the last working copy and based our latest website ...
369
votes
19answers
69k views
I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code — what now?
I hope this isn't too general of a question; I could really use some seasoned advice.
I am newly employed as the sole "SW Engineer" in a fairly small shop of scientists who have spent the last 10-20 ...
2
votes
3answers
325 views
How can I determine how to charge for supporting SharePoint sites and SharePoint development?
I recently created a site in SharePoint and I need to setup a maintenance/support agreement for the site. In addition to the site, there are some custom modules that were developed that we monitor. ...
0
votes
2answers
81 views
Proper name for a project supports 2 different release
Is there a technical name for a software project where the current and prior stable releases are both maintained?
0
votes
0answers
75 views
Strategy for reading and understanding Node.js code
Concretely I am looking at this 2000 line file of what I will pretty arbitrarily call "mediocre" code.
It's not well-commented
variable names and function names seem consistently intelligent
...
1
vote
1answer
97 views
Maintenance code needs improvements [duplicate]
I am currently maintaining/enhancing a project a bit old speaking of the 1990's. Atleast 15 developers would have worked over it.
Going through the code for understanding is bit difficult.
No ...
36
votes
6answers
1k views
How should you deal with a popular project that you no longer want to maintain?
I am the maintainer of a project which has a large non-technical userbase. I've been maintaining it for about 4 years now and adding new features as they've been requested.
I'd like to move on to ...
0
votes
1answer
119 views
Functional document from code
I am a Sr java Developer and have recently joined a new team. Here I have been asked to create a functional document looking at the code of a legacy application. This application was written about ...
7
votes
1answer
120 views
Maintenance model for external artifacts
When we think about maintaining a software solution holistically, we have to think about things like non-code change control and configuration management, in addition to the actual source code. For ...
5
votes
7answers
482 views
Is there an opposite for the term “Backporting”?
As I understand, the term "Backporting" is used to describe a fix which is applied in a future version which is also ported to a previous version. Wikipedia definition is as follows:
Backporting ...
4
votes
1answer
65 views
Continuous “Platform” Integration?
We have accumulated a large codebase of somewhat-well-document projects, many of which aren't actively being used, but that we want to be able to start using again quickly if necessary.
What is the ...
2
votes
1answer
183 views
Software failure due to maintenance oversights example/case study
I'm doing some investigation into the role of maintenance in software development and the use of metrics within the development cycle.
What I am asking is for a point in the right direction or ...
10
votes
6answers
516 views
What changes are too big to be made easy by proper design?
This is a rather vague question, but it's something I've never felt has been answered in a satisfactory way when reading about proper design.
Generally, when learning about Object Oriented ...
40
votes
10answers
2k views
Is it a good idea to schedule regular time to clean up code? [closed]
I'm managing a small team of developers. Every so often we decide we're going to spend a day or two to clean up our code.
Would it be a good idea to schedule regular time, say 1 week every 2 months, ...
46
votes
15answers
3k views
Working on someone else's code
I have hardly a year's experience in coding. After I started working, most of the time I would be working on someone else's code. Either adding new features over the existing ones or modifying the ...
22
votes
5answers
810 views
Maintain a web application once the only developer is gone
I have a terminal disease and there is a very high chance that I will no longer be in this world by the end of the year.
I have developed a web application that it is extensively used in my family’s ...
3
votes
4answers
467 views
What can I do to maintain respect for a poorly written codebase? [duplicate]
In my job I have to maintain a poorly written codebase which is both hard to understand, has tons of comments that are just plain wrong, has a bunch of weird decisionmaking going on in it and a whole ...
2
votes
3answers
233 views
Study a project to be able to maintain it in future
I've joined as a fresher (trainee) a software company developing for Windows Store. I don't know much about C#. My company has started Windows Store development recently. They didn't do .Net ...
5
votes
6answers
236 views
Policy and practice on code maintenance
I just came out of University and have been working at this company for roughly 8 months, while I was given the title of developer, most of the time I have spent on is fixing and debugging other ...
9
votes
4answers
652 views
How to convince my coworkers that doing things right will save them time
I recently started at a new company, with a handful of programmers. Its a medium sized company, with around 70 employees, but IT only has 9-10, and there are 3 "programmers" beside myself. However, ...
14
votes
12answers
1k views
What to do with a not well organized application? [duplicate]
I'm a newly graduate programmer and just got hired before my graduation. In the office, I used to create and revise modules of some applications developed by other programmers in our company. The ...
7
votes
4answers
647 views
Readability of || statements
On HTML5 Boilerplate they use this code for jQuery:
<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>window.jQuery || ...
4
votes
3answers
267 views
Functional testing before code checkin
I am working on a project with legacy code where it does not have much code coverage. One of the idea to improve that is to enforce a rule that each code check-in must have test, not only test but ...
10
votes
2answers
205 views
What tools or techniques are useful for describing an unfamiliar codebase?
When manually inspecting unfamiliar code (to review or modify), I seem to have three options.
A top-down read of the code, choosing each next source file by how fundamental the filename seems. I ...
66
votes
21answers
6k views
How would you react if someone told you your code is a mess?
I am a good programmer, or so I thought before. I always love to program. And I want to learn many things about programming to make me a better programmer. I studied programming for 1 year and now I ...
6
votes
3answers
257 views
Cost of maintenance depending on paradigms
Is there any data on which paradigms allow for code which is easier/cheaper to maintain? Certainly, independantly of the chosen paradigm, good design is cheaper to maintain than bad, but there should ...
-2
votes
1answer
114 views
What should I aware of , when preparing a document of website for later maintenance use? [closed]
The development team has finished a website and my duty is to prepare a document so that other programmers can maintain the website with ease.
I have no experience in this and would like to ask what ...
12
votes
8answers
2k views
Should we ever delete data in a database?
I am new to databases and trying to understand the basic concepts. I have learned how to delete data in a database. But one of my friends told me that you should never delete data in a database. ...
7
votes
9answers
590 views
What is the way to understand someone else's giant uncommented spaghetti code? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
I’ve inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code — what now?
I have been recently handled a giant multithreaded program with no comments and have been asked to understand ...
5
votes
2answers
297 views
GIS-based data visualization and maintenance tool
Background
Looking to leverage an existing GIS system for exploring organizational data.
Architecture
The following figure represents a high-level overview of the system's desired features:
The ...
1
vote
5answers
518 views
“Opportunity” to take over maintenance of a small internal website. What should I do?
I have been offered an "opportunity" to take over maintenance of a small internal website run by my group that provides information about schedules and photos of events the groups done.
My manager ...
1
vote
5answers
462 views
What is the concept of software wear and tear?
I have heard that over time, software can begin to show signs of wear and tear.
What does wear and tear of software mean?
Software itself not being a physical entity, so how can there be wear and ...
0
votes
4answers
373 views
What Are Some Tips For Writing A Large Number of Unit Tests? [closed]
I've recently been tasked with testing some COM objects of the desktop app I work on. What this means in practice is writing a large number (>100) unit tests to test different but related methods and ...
20
votes
1answer
691 views
What is the effect of creating unit tests during development on time to develop as well as time spent in maintenance activities?
I'm a consultant and I am going to introduce unit tests to all developers at my client site. My goal is to ensure that all new applications should have unit tests for all classes created.
The client ...
8
votes
3answers
228 views
How do you break out of the role of a code maintainer? [closed]
In my last three jobs, I was a code maintainer. In all three cases, I was hired after the majority of the code for the project was already written.
I'm a self taught programmer. Before I ever started ...
16
votes
2answers
609 views
How do people maintain their test suite?
In particular, I'm curious about the following aspects:
How do you know that your test cases are wrong (or out-of-date) and needed to be repaired (or discarded)? I mean, even if a test case became ...
41
votes
24answers
2k views
How do you go from a so so programmer to a great one? [closed]
How do you go from being an okay programmer to being able to write maintainable clean code? For example David Hansson was writing Basecamp when in the process he created Rails as part of writing ...
6
votes
2answers
521 views
How to maintain a demo version of an application?
I need to be able to demo our production application to prospective clients. The way I have it setup today is simple. The demo application is an exact duplicate of the production system, except that ...
8
votes
8answers
768 views
Copy-and-Pasted Test Code: How Bad is This?
My current job is mostly writing GUI test code for various applications that we work on. However, I find that I tend to copy and paste a lot of code within tests. The reason for this is that the areas ...
0
votes
3answers
261 views
What can I do to make sure my code gets maintained in a developer light environment? [closed]
I am a contract data analyst, so I bounce between jobs every 3-6 months, which I find to be a good fit for me, but it leads to some problems when it comes to coding. I mostly do statistics (I've asked ...
338
votes
27answers
74k views
I'm doing 90% maintenance and 10% development, is this normal?
I have just recently started my career as a web developer for a medium sized company. As soon as I started I got the task of expanding an existing application (badly coded, developed by multiple ...
42
votes
18answers
5k views
How to manage a developer who has poor communication skills
I manage a small team of developers on an application which is in the mid-point of its lifecycle, within a big firm. This unfortunately means there is commonly a 30/70 split of Programming tasks to ...
20
votes
6answers
996 views
How to fix a project with basically no structure?
I've been working on a software project mostly solo for over 5 years. It was a mess to begin with (I am the third or fourth developer to be working on it), and although it's less of a mess now it is ...
