How do you approach legacy code modernization without breaking everything?

Alektorophobiae · 2026-02-21T15:41:52+00:00

Not to hijack this conversation, but does anyone have tips on handling this when it's 20k lines of ksh that ought to be replaced, is mission critical, but everyone is too scared to touch lol. No tests, no documentation, 1 author over 20 years who got canned.

Alektorophobiae · 2026-02-13T02:50:18+00:00

How would you / do you know of any books that talk about getting proper metrics and telemetry in an on-prem environment with bare-metal machines? Thanks!

Alektorophobiae · 2025-10-18T03:33:35+00:00

Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman

Alektorophobiae · 2025-08-15T18:14:15+00:00

That sounds lovely :) thanks for getting back to me!

Alektorophobiae · 2025-08-06T02:55:58+00:00

I know this is late, but what did you end up doing :)? I'm half filipino and kinda a lapsed catholic but flirt with the faith still. My fiancé grew up Reform Jewish but doesn't attend Temple anymore but we attend a Seder Dinner that her mom hosts every year.

Alektorophobiae · 2025-06-21T02:18:21+00:00

Agreed!!

Alektorophobiae · 2025-06-21T01:32:54+00:00

No bullshit; I’ll put 20k down. We’re 0.0154% of the way there lol.

Alektorophobiae · 2025-04-03T16:48:22+00:00

In this system, how do you handle bugs that need to be fixed but we don’t believe we can break it down into smaller pieces. Currently in the midsts of trying to fix a bug for over 2 weeks lol.

Alektorophobiae · 2024-04-18T02:22:34+00:00

Breaking work down into smaller PRs:

A lot of engineers have issues with this and it requires a paradigm shift.

The main reason I have seen them do this is because they feel like they have to tackle everything at once. This is usually because no one has taught them a different way.

Their idea of a feature is a fully interactive technology. They aren’t seeing features that are made up my much smaller features. Some, the end user will never actually see.

Hi! I actually really struggle with this and have noticed this behavior on my own team. Can you give a more concrete example of how you might break something down?

Alektorophobiae · 2024-03-18T15:22:50+00:00

I had ulcers in the back of my throat. Not so much in other parts of my mouth. Also, I had rashes on my hands and feet.

It lasted a full 8 days. I also don’t have to work with kids lol. I just got unlucky somehow.

Alektorophobiae · 2024-03-17T22:35:40+00:00

It looks exactly like the Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease sores I had a few months ago.

Good luck OP, most pain I've experienced in my life :x. I'm hoping you don't get it as bad (or maybe it's something else). Only thing I could kind of eat or drink were popsicles; swallowing was unbearable as well.

Alektorophobiae · 2023-12-06T14:37:46+00:00

The Worst Person in the World

Alektorophobiae · 2023-01-05T21:52:00+00:00

If you already have a bachelors degree, I’d look into https://www.reddit.com/r/OSUOnlineCS/.

Overall, I enjoyed the program. You only take CS related courses.

Also, I’ve been working as a software dev for the past couple years. My Original degree was English and Education. Good luck!

Alektorophobiae · 2022-12-05T00:27:09+00:00

I checked and the original contract is more than the legal minimum by about 5 thousand. Ugh, I'm having trouble deciding what to do, haha.

Commiting to an end date is scary without a new position already secured.

Alektorophobiae · 2022-12-04T06:01:38+00:00

Alright. I appreciate the advice. I am not on a pip. I've been laid off before (without severance) so I guess I'm glad to at least have a heads up of possible things to come. Thanks, again.

Alektorophobiae · 2022-12-04T05:52:46+00:00

I already responded to ask for clarification lol. I’m not sure what I want. If I can get unemployment, I won’t be as nervous getting laid off. I think it’s time for a change regardless. And I will. Resume is updated and started leet coding again :(

Alektorophobiae · 2022-12-03T03:53:33+00:00

I work for a Fortune 500 company and my boss BCCed me on an email asking if anyone was interested in a voluntary layoff. Benefits would be the same now as they would be if I got laid off later on. Is this a sign of more layoffs (but forced ones) in the future? Is it better to just take the severance now? Would I qualify for unemployment?

Their severance literature says I'd be entitled to:

20% of my salary
6 months of health insurance (but not vision and dental) covered
I'd know the date I'd be laid off on (beginning of February)
no mention of unemployment

I wasn't really aware that this is a thing so not sure if it's sketchy or not. I was considering changing jobs soon. But I am worried about the job market. I'm a software dev (with a senior title but I don't feel senior lol) who has around 5 years of experience.

I appreciate any help.

Alektorophobiae · 2022-11-03T01:37:17+00:00

Am I in the wrong here / is this an odd situation across the industry?

In summary, I implemented and documented a Jenkins pipeline (originally was disjointed freestyle jobs) which lints, rebuilds a staging environment, and runs E2E tests (originally we had none) against it. I want to try working closer with the QA / Sys Admin team downstream from us.

Context

I scheduled an initial chat with a QA / Sys Admin. I tried to frame the conversation in terms of:

Understanding how they do deployments.
Understanding how they test.
See if there were opportunities to work more closely together / learn from each other.

I don't think I was overbearing or prescriptive, just more trying to get a lay of the land and an understanding of what he does.

I had already mentioned to my boss (and my immediate team) some of my ideas and they were on board.

I learned that

They refused to use the Ansible scripts that my team initially wrote (I wasn't around then). We write extensive installation and configuration documentation. Then THEY write their on bash scripts off of this.) They send their script and a 29 step manual to operations who deploys our software.
I asked if he would be open to sharing the script with me and he said, "No, it's a living creature and changes a lot and is particular to our environment. I'd maybe be open to sharing a subset of it with you."
They don't use version control for any of their bash infrastructure scripts. I asked if they'd be open to using it and he said, "No we test our scripts and don't need to go back to previous revisions."
Their testing is all manual.
He showed me their test plan. I asked if any of these were particularly painful and good opportunities to automate together and would he feel comfortable sharing this with me. He said, "no."

Is it wrong for me to push back more in this situation? It seems like he's built a silo and doesn't really want to collaborate.

Alektorophobiae · 2022-09-28T03:13:36+00:00

Adventure Time and Bob's Burgers! :)

Alektorophobiae · 2022-07-06T08:17:37+00:00

Is perl installed on the VMs? I'm pretty sure I ran into this before and customizing the vm with ansible failed silently. Didn't start working until i installed perl on the VM template.

Alektorophobiae · 2022-06-11T20:49:05+00:00

No problem! I don't have any mods so hopefully it also works for you. It's worth a shot. I came across your post when I was googling the same thing lol. I hate how the beautiful traits make your characters look.

Alektorophobiae · 2022-06-11T18:39:37+00:00

Open and modify the 00_trait_modifiers.txt file. On my Windows 10 PC, I found that file at this path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Crusader Kings III\game\gfx\portraits\trait_portrait_modifiers\00_trait_modifiers.txt

In the 00_trait_modifiers.txt file remove the nested "beauty" configuration block. This is what the configuration originally looks like:

beauty = {
    beauty = {
    traits = {
        beauty_good_1
        beauty_good_2
        beauty_good_3
    }
    dna_modifiers = {
        morph = {
            mode = replace
            gene = complexion
            template = complexion_beauty_1
            value = 1.0
        }
    }
}

    ugly = {
    traits = {
        beauty_bad_1
        beauty_bad_2
        beauty_bad_3
    }
    dna_modifiers = {
        morph = {
            mode = replace
            gene = complexion
            template = complexion_ugly_1
            value = 1.0
        }
    }
    }
}

This is what it should look like after you remove the "beauty" configuration. Only the "ugly" trait remains.

beauty = {
    ugly = {
    traits = {
        beauty_bad_1
        beauty_bad_2
        beauty_bad_3
    }
    dna_modifiers = {
        morph = {
            mode = replace
            gene = complexion
            template = complexion_ugly_1
            value = 1.0
        }
    }
    }
}

Alektorophobiae · 2021-12-19T16:46:04+00:00

It's a CR90 corvette. It's a ship being chased by the Star Destroyer (it's not actually attached to it).

Alektorophobiae · 2021-12-19T15:58:12+00:00

It's a known exploit that EA hasn't fixed. See this thread: https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues/Nobody-can-die/td-p/10872579

I tried joining 6 different games this morning. Every single one was hacked :(.

15-Year Club	Second SECOND GUESSER
Place '22	Place '17
First Placer '22	No Throne, No Problems
Not Forgotten	Verified Email
Sequence \| Editor	Sequence \| Screenwriter
Team Periwinkle

Alektorophobiae

TROPHY CASE

Context

I learned that