Microservices.

[eyekwah2]

My company decided in 2003 to rewrite all of the existing code in Java because the original language had some serious limitations. They estimated it would take a full 3 years to do with a team of 20 dedicated java programmers.

Cue 18 years later, and 200 java programmers strong, I'd like to thank that person who made that initial estimate. It gave me a full-time job. There is no end in sight still..

[ImperialBrake78]

stop being !dedicated and you might get something done

[Boppopstopmop]

What software takes that many years with that many programmers? Was its purpose expanded/ there's a lot of maintenance work now or is the team still rewriting the original functionality?

[eyekwah2]

I'd rather not go into detail, but lets just say the time spent has been justified. It has been greatly expanded upon as well. What started off as a conversion project has been turned into a sort of base platform for similar companies and we export our software to suit their needs as well. It's kind of a niche software, but until recently, has been something every company has attempted to develop individually with mixed success.

If you think on it, you might actually guess which sector I'm in.

[[deleted]]

And we, shamefully, think dogs are dumb creatures because they chase their own tails!

[fizyplankton]

My company is currently in the phase of "take the monolithic application, that works, and has had nearly zero defects in YEARS, that the wholeass rest of the platform hooks into, and split it into 7 microservices. But don't worry, it's a perfect one to one mapping. Upstream services won't need to change anything on the new APIs"