this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
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Now listen here you little shit (media.piefed.social)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by Ek-Hou-Van-Braai@piefed.social to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
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[–] Samskara@sh.itjust.works 65 points 1 day ago (1 children)

In my experience there’s usually a confluence of individual and institutional failures.

It usually goes like this.

  1. hotshot developers is hired at company with crappy software
  2. hotshot dev pitches a complete rewrite that will solve all issues
  3. complete rewrite is rejected
  4. hotshot dev shoehorns a new architecture and trendy dependencies into the old codebase
  5. hotshot new dev leaves
  6. software is more complex, inconsistent, and still crappy
[–] ViatorOmnium@piefed.social 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

That's one of the failure modes, good orgs would have design and review processes to stop it.

There are other classics like arbitrary deadlines, conflicting and shifting requirements and product direction, perverse incentives, etc.

I would even say that the AI craze is a result of the latter.

[–] PapstJL4U@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Yeah, certain code developed organically (aka shifting demands). Devs know the code gets worse, but either by time or money they don't have the option to review and redo code.