Post AscgjjM8WxtAWTqRYe by ernie@writing.exchange
(DIR) More posts by ernie@writing.exchange
(DIR) Post #AscgiehQMI6fn6Hzw8 by ernie@writing.exchange
2025-03-31T19:05:08Z
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OK, we have our first question, courtesy of @anildash!Here’s what I found … (thread)
(DIR) Post #Ascgifrk1PxBPO7kem by ernie@writing.exchange
2025-03-31T19:05:37Z
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Rewriting a code base is believed to be an infamously bad idea. Joel Spolsky famously warned about it being a bad idea as far back as 2000, when Netscape did it.(On the other hand, we got Firefox out of that, so I guess it’s a wash?)https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/
(DIR) Post #AscgimyjZohrT6Rw1o by ernie@writing.exchange
2025-03-31T19:06:06Z
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There are other infamous examples. Most recently, Sonos rebuilt its entire app from scratch, effectively destroying years of goodwill with audio fans in one fell swoop. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/05/17/sonos-new-app-update-problems/
(DIR) Post #AscgiuCSjAqZrhvUtk by ernie@writing.exchange
2025-03-31T19:06:34Z
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But sometimes, it happens, even when it seems like a horrible idea. There’s a reason why it seemingly never works out, and it’s because you’re having to start over from scratch, which can cost you time, money, and resources.
(DIR) Post #Ascgj1xrrJvTwl9xGC by ernie@writing.exchange
2025-03-31T19:07:19Z
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In the mid-2000s, it was announced that the popular Mac-based text editor TextMate would get a top-down rewrite for TextMate 2, but it took so long to develop that competitors like Sublime Text and VS Code began to usurp it in the market.It took a while.https://www.cultofmac.com/news/be-patient-for-textmate-2
(DIR) Post #Ascgj9qiXmxaOtsME4 by ernie@writing.exchange
2025-03-31T19:08:08Z
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TextMate 2’s development began in 2006. It *ended* in 2019.https://github.com/textmate/textmate
(DIR) Post #AscgjH9POh4R2tfspc by ernie@writing.exchange
2025-03-31T19:08:29Z
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Sometimes, you have to rebuild because you designed your app on the wrong platform. MySpace notably did it twice. The social network began as a Perl app, but the developer left on bad terms, at which point they recoded the app in ColdFusion. (ColdFusion was a bad choice.)
(DIR) Post #AscgjOIAqVF1C6pTxw by ernie@writing.exchange
2025-03-31T19:08:52Z
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This created a famous “happy accident”—a code error that led MySpace to support custom CSS. It also created another problem: ColdFusion doesn’t scale, so it had to switch to .NET to avoid hacking incidents and scaling problems.I actually wrote about this years ago: https://tedium.co/2020/07/14/social-media-customization-failings/
(DIR) Post #AscgjVHiqa2UsjfijY by ernie@writing.exchange
2025-03-31T19:09:26Z
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Often, older companies reliant on somewhat outdated coding mechanisms, like PHP, will bring in more modernized elements to speed things up. Facebook, which was built on PHP, developed HipHop, which compiled the PHP code into faster C++. https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2010/02/02/hiphop-for-php--move-fast/
(DIR) Post #AscgjcMEYCo6okpvEm by ernie@writing.exchange
2025-03-31T19:09:53Z
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Automattic, meanwhile, moved some of WordPress’ backend capabilities to the JavaScript-based REST. https://www.infoq.com/news/2015/11/wordpress-php-javascript/
(DIR) Post #AscgjjM8WxtAWTqRYe by ernie@writing.exchange
2025-03-31T19:12:22Z
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The most famous and successful codebase revamp came in 2001, when Apple rebuilt and modernized MacOS, which was originally written in ObjectPascal and assembly language, in favor of Mac OS X, which was built with Objective C.More on ObjectPascal here: https://preserve.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.02/02.12/ObjectPascal/index.html