When your code is nearly old enough to vote

[denise]

My talk at this year's linux.conf.au was "When Your Codebase Is Nearly Old Enough To Vote": a case study of Dreamwidth and all the horrible horrible things we've found down there underneath the couch cushions, along with the lessons we've learned about when to rewrite them and when to leave them alone.

You can view the YouTube recording (sorry, no transcript), or check out the slides!

Comments

[shevler]

Извините, я ничего не понял.

[princessofgeeks]

Fascinating, even to a dim bulb like me.

[cyprinella]

Heh, the anonymous link story. I remember when that happened. Also the change from showing images on anon comments when you hit reply.

[denise]

The other story I was going to tell but had to cut for time: so, people keep asking us for the ability to select 'no icon' while they're commenting, even if they have a default icon set. We looked into it, figuring it couldn't be anything more than a quick change, right? ...turns out, the only reason that no icon displays if you don't have a default icon set is because of a bug that's been there since icons were introduced in like 1999 or so, and trying to do it deliberately would require rewriting the entire icon code. And that is why you can't choose 'no icon' when posting. :P

[cyprinella]

Huh, that wasn't one I ever used. I could see how it would be useful though if you did.

Personally I still miss the html dinosaurs of blink and marque.

[cathexys]

Wow, that was fascinating! I'd never seen you speak--you are totally engaging, even if I only understood half (at most :).

[katherine]

I enjoyed this a lot (and learned things).

I would be happy to have a try at transcribing if that would be helpful, though it would take a while!

[denise]

That would be awesome!

[katherine]

I will make it a project then. Does emailing you a plain text of what I come up with work as a delivery method?

[denise]

Sure, that would be great!

[katherine]

Done and emailed.

[denise]

And, super belatedly, I got it; thank you! I will re-post the link to the video of this version + the transcript after I deliver the talk again at Open Source Bridge next week.

[quietpathos]

Please also consider posting the transcript under a cut on the entry and/or in the video description, if you can.

Although as I mentioned, the auto-captions work ok here.

[starlady]

That was super interesting!

[grammarwoman]

What a fantastic encapsulation of DW's history (well, LJ's too, I suppose)! Lots of excellent lessons to share there.

I had to laugh, because at my company we are still supporting gross old order entry screens written in Fortran and run on a VAX system that is so out of date that we literally can't buy new parts for it anymore. We have to snatch up used machines when they become available. Hell, we don't even have all of our customer information in a database yet - a big chunk is still in a flat file. I believe there are code comments dated in the late 80s. I moved over to web development almost two years ago, so I'm thankfully out of that quagmire.

The parent company who bought us and turned us into a division 15-20 years back (it was before my time) keeps promising that they're going to standardize the whole company's systems, from order entry to customer maintenance. I don't know if it's ever going to happen, or if they're just going to close our division rather than convert us.

[denise]

I laugh because I FEEL YOUR PAIN.

[quietpathos]

The auto-captions work well for this. For you and for Rachel Maddow (on some clips).

If you are ever needing to commission formal transcription or captioning work, I recommend aleja; I've hired her for small projects for deaf friends. She makes HQ work for reasonable rates and is reliable with deadlines.

[denise]

Thank you! (I hadn't checked with the auto-captions.) It's good to know that the speech-to-text processor understands my accent. :)

And thanks for the pointer! If we ever do any official DW video (doubt we will, but), I will definitely look into her service.

Today's Code Push

[random_xtras]

I have to say, the new code push has me concerned now that it's happened. Things are not easy to look at anymore, and I'm afraid I'm going to lose the ability to use a site that I am heavily dependent on.