We’ve been moving sites/servers/databases and services to a new infrastructure this last week or so. Not only have we had to factor in time for the physical moves, there’s also been the added delay and complication of paying back 3 years of technical debt.
Technical debt is built up every time you are presented with two options of getting the solution implemented or at a lower level, writing the code it self. At the time, when pressure is on to implement and deliver, the easy/messy way seems best but this can easily come back and bite you in the ass when things start to go wrong or as I’ve been experiencing this week, when systems get moved around.
The most common piece of technical debt I’ve been paying back on this week has been refactoring systems to move hard coded database connection strings into configuration files where they can be easily changed as necessary.
I know of at least one system somewhere in another organisation that had the Value Added Tax (VAT) rate hardcoded into its finance systems. I hope they had an enjoyable time late last year when the rate dropped to 15%!
But enough of all this ranting. I’d like to thank the “programmer” that hardcoded the connection strings on the systems I’ve been refactoring this week. Your ineptitude has kept me and my family fed for another week. I only hope that you are now doing something less technical and that your next poo is a pineapple…
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