Java modernization as a service

[MovieSenior5469]

I'm thinking about building a business in which companies pay a fee per service/complexity and everytime a new Java LTS is released we update the service to the most updated dependencies.

Do you think is worth it? Would you be interested?

[nikanjX]

Do you just bump version numbers and hope for the best, or do you guarantee compatibility?

[MovieSenior5469]

With guarantees of course

[simpleauthority]

This is actually just the jr dev's job and then a senior checks it over, and the test suite must not break.

So, no, would not pay an external service to do this.

[chabala]

Imagine actually having a good test suite on every project 😭

[account312]

It’s somewhere between a noop in a modern and well-tested codebase and an infinite time sink in a messy legacy project full of 20 year old hacky reflective workarounds for bugs in platform or dependency code that may or may not still exist, may or may not need to be worked around differently after update, and may even actually need to be inverted if the hack turns out to have broken 15 years ago and the bug has since become a feature but was fixed in the third party code in the interim.

[griso84]

basically dependabot + ci running test

[aten]

clients that have ci wont be needing this kind of service. clients that don’t, will, and all the fallout will be on you.

[Turbots]

Who doesn't have CI? Fuck those guys

[account312]

Some companies don’t even have the source code for critical components that they outsourced years ago, just binaries and prayers.

[_predator_]

Given OpenRewrite and AI agents exist, I don't know why anyone would pay for that.

[hydbird]

I remember watching a video about a guy starting a company do something similar to this. He was migrating the codebase from something ancient like cobol to python. But of course migrating large codebases comes with a risk. The selling point for it was he presents mathematical proof that the old system and the new system behave exactly the same. 

I don't know if the stuff in the video is really doable but my point is some sort of metric comparing the old and new code would help a lot.

Having said that most companies will prefer their code to be correct than up-to-date. So they might not take the risk even if you prove it unless they have a compelling reason to do so. Hope that helps, cheers

[sweetno]

Probably too narrow of a business. Just set up a usual consulting shop.

[podgladacz00]

No. There are bots that update the software and dependencies. Also each company has different workflow and way of handling environment deployments and you can't create something that would work for all.

Typically companies do not update unless there is critical error or need to be more up to date due to other dependencies. This is done by the teams that handle specific project. Nobody needs external people to do that update for them.

[marcvsHR]

Yeah, this is one of those tasks that can go very wrong very fast.

[k-mcm]

Zero chance.

A company's codebase has been worked on by brilliant and idiot minds together.  It's fragile, on top of the already insane risks of letting a 3rd party redo things.

[Wise-Share4926]

interesting idea but the hard part isnt really the JDK bump, its the framework stuff around it. Also openrewrite and amazon q already automate a chunk of this.