There are a lot of different tasks for software developers, but each and every one of us has had to review old code. Whether it’s checking for a previous version or seeing how someone solved a problem in the past, legacy code is part of the job. But have you ever reviewed previous versions and become frustrated enough to ask “who wrote this code?” and madly hit “git blame” to find out who is responsible? I’m sure your answer is yes! Maybe the person responsible was you five years ago, a colleague that left the company whom you never met, or even a current teammate you look up to.
There’s no blame in “git blame.” Everyone writes legacy code because of a very simple rule: time. With time, requirements change, systems evolve, and most importantly, humans learn. So, it’s inevitable that today’s best becomes tomorrow’s pain — although, these pains could become tolerable by introducing a few practices to your team.
In my years of software development, I’ve worked with a number of legacy systems. Sometimes, I was lucky enough to get a chance to redesign and refactor, but other times, I was not. Through all of that, I’ve learned that the most important aspect of a legacy system is its maintenance. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve asked myself “how on earth should I add this new feature or find the bug when I can’t even understand what the code does?”
If this has piqued your interest and you want to learn more about role-based access control (RBAC), Elastic Cloud has handled RBAC in a standard and straightforward way. You can check out the documentation for a good resource.
The release and timing of any features or functionality described in this post remain at Elastic’s sole discretion. Any features or functionality not currently available may not be delivered on time or at all.
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