I’ve noticed something about my job.
The product I am programming is quite old and has a lot of stale code. Much of it was written poorly. I’m sure it was good at the time, but its age is showing. It makes maintaining it harder, and new features are difficult to implement because you are fighting that legacy.
Every so often, we programmers would propose rewriting parts of it. This would make it more efficient and easier to add new features. Sounds good, doesn’t it? The problem is that the managers will always ask “Will the customer notice?” No, they won’t. So we would spend many months working on something to make the user experience exactly the same. So the proposal would die.
Lately though, things have changed. I now work for a large company that loves its bureaucracy. This has led to a new development. We have finished the work for a new release that won’t go out for several months. So we have time to do stuff. Now we can change the code, but only if it won’t change the customer’s experience. In other words, “Will the customer notice?” is working to our advantage. The documentation has been written, so as long as the UI is the same, we can get away with a lot.
We still need to convince a manager though.