Need some advice
 

I don't know if many of you have ever been in this situation, but recently I was thrown into this and I'm still trying to figure out what to do.

Here's my problem:
At work, for the first time we were contracted to continue work on software that someone else had initially developed, this is a new experience for me, prior to this all software I had worked on was created in house, from scratch.

Anyways, the problem is such, the company that initially built this thing did so in a manner of coding which I feel is very unsupportable, unchangeable, lots of hardcoded things everywhere, bad database design, etc, etc, etc.

Now the management at my company don't understand all this, they just see the end product running and think, "oh its such a great product" and give us developers very limited time to make additions/changes. which means, we can't fix anything completely.

The previous company also apparently had something against microsoft, instead of using pre-built controls they re-implemented thousands and thousands of lines of code to make their own controls, anything but minor changes to the way it already works is quite a chore.

now to the advice gathering questions:

-do i continue to follow the standards set by the original makers (use their pre-built controls rather than stuff like ajax toolkit which currently is not used at all, would it be bad to add this just for one new page, even though all the old pages will remain under the original implementation due to the face noone will pay to change them?) or do i introduce new ways which i feel are better but then throws off the standard processes the rest of the app follows?

so i guess the real question is:
- do i just keep adding the the madness that already exists or do i break the standards, except then the app would have 2 different ways of doing things.

-what other type of damage control can i possibly do since noone will pay for modifying something that already works?

share your experiences of stuff like this with me, what did you do? how did you handle it?

thanks guys

Re: Need some advice
 

Being a mainframe programmer, I can relate to your experience. We have millions of lines of code that was converted from assembly to COBOL using automated software leaving hundreds of GO TO's all over the place.

Even though the system has its caveats, it is one of the most capable, expandable, and reliable insurance administration systems out there. So, I know that we'll be keeping it for a long time. Our modification policy has been to preserve base functionality and methods(including goto's) which was proven to work. However, when we add new code, we have to abide by strict standards to make our code more readable and maintainable.

Re: Need some advice
 

>>do i continue to follow the standards set by the original makers (use their pre-built controls
Yes -- don't fix it if it ain't broke.

>>or do i introduce new ways
No -- leave it as it is. If someone wants to pay you to rewrite major parts of the problem that would be different -- but don't do it for free.

>> do i just keep adding the the madness that already exists
Yes, unless you can talk management into paying to correct the flaws, which is unlikely. Create a list of all the things that need to be changed and an estimate of how long it will take you to complete (code, debug and test) the changes. Present this to management and let them decide if it is worth fixing or not.

I suspect one reason the original programmers implemented their own controls is so that Microsoft (or whoever) can't pull the rug out from under them. Microsoft is noted for making major changes to c++ classes from one compiler version to the next. MFC is a good example -- it underwent some major changes between VC++ 6.0 and VC++ 2005.

Re: Need some advice
 

Probably better to follow the existing patterns for now. If your company is taking a long-term ownership, you might recommend something along the lines of fixing things as it breaks or as new code is introduced, but re-writing is overly expensive and tends to introduce new bugs or regressions.

Sounds like a nice enterprisey software to work on (</dailyWTFreference>).

Re: Need some advice
 

thanks guys, you're probably right