RE: Why are legacy apps be forgotten?

Last Update: 22.11.2018. By Jens in Newsletter

Following up on yesterdays email. The difference between the perception of material and immaterial goods is not the only reason why legacy apps are forgotten. Another one is the economic value and the way our modern world thinks about it.

Simply said, it is the money side. If the repair costs more than the thing is worth to us, we will not fix it. So for the car example, if buying a new car is cheaper than replacing all screws of type X, nobody will do it. Not we, not the manufacturer. Especially not the manufacturer. They are economical driven. However, they are also run by humans and us humans behave highly irrational, so not everything makes rational sense.

For making the economical decision we must put numbers on those options; money numbers. Not exact to the penny but at least in a reasonable range. The same we do with estimation how long it will take to implement feature X, Y or Z. You know how hard it is and how often it is wrong.

When I am the business responsible for the legacy app, I need to know what options I got and what they cost. But they are only valid for a single point in time. In t+1 the situation might be totally different. That makes it hard to plan. Additionally, often nobody on the team is tracking security vulnerabilities for the used stack. Sure sysadmins do for the machines, but not many dev teams do for their stack. Even if they do, the biz guy must approve to changes. And here comes another reason for the dilemma. Such things are way too abstract for many people.

It is already hard to asses the risk of some simple screws in a car but gets worse with immaterial goods like apps. An accident with deaths is understandable but someone might be able to inject SQL and extract data she’s not allowed to see. Yeah, so what? Nobody died.

The perception is totally different. Not only on material vs immaterial, but also on the attached prices and values and also the consequences. And regarding the apps, it is not your perception but that of the business responsibles.

Can we make that less bad? I think so, but that’s for tomorrows email.

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