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The Bike Shed

461: Writing new vs existing code with Sara Jackson

42 min episode · 2 min read
·
Sara Jackson

Episode

42 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Design & UX, Software Development, Product & Tech Trends

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • Documentation timing trade-offs: Greenfield teams sacrifice speed writing documentation that won't benefit them immediately but becomes critical for future maintainers. Commit messages and inline comments provide low-effort alternatives that help both current iteration speed and future code archaeology.
  • API design approaches: Greenfield projects can skip input validation and schemas when always adding new endpoints, but mature apps modifying existing endpoints need tools like Zod or GraphQL schemas from the start to prevent production bugs from breaking changes across front-end and back-end teams.
  • Convention over configuration advantage: Ruby on Rails bridges greenfield and mature modalities by providing standard patterns where developers immediately know controllers live in controllers folders. JavaScript apps require explicit pattern documentation since teams pick three from ten mainstream approaches each year.
  • Modular code benefits both phases: Writing modular, clean code helps greenfield teams iterate quickly when switching third-party tools while simultaneously making future changes cheaper for mature app developers, creating immediate value rather than just long-term benefits for maintenance teams.

What It Covers

Sara Jackson and Joelle Kenville compare greenfield development versus maintaining established codebases, exploring how different constraints, documentation practices, and technical decisions shape each modality and affect future developers working on the same code.

Key Questions Answered

  • Documentation timing trade-offs: Greenfield teams sacrifice speed writing documentation that won't benefit them immediately but becomes critical for future maintainers. Commit messages and inline comments provide low-effort alternatives that help both current iteration speed and future code archaeology.
  • API design approaches: Greenfield projects can skip input validation and schemas when always adding new endpoints, but mature apps modifying existing endpoints need tools like Zod or GraphQL schemas from the start to prevent production bugs from breaking changes across front-end and back-end teams.
  • Convention over configuration advantage: Ruby on Rails bridges greenfield and mature modalities by providing standard patterns where developers immediately know controllers live in controllers folders. JavaScript apps require explicit pattern documentation since teams pick three from ten mainstream approaches each year.
  • Modular code benefits both phases: Writing modular, clean code helps greenfield teams iterate quickly when switching third-party tools while simultaneously making future changes cheaper for mature app developers, creating immediate value rather than just long-term benefits for maintenance teams.

Notable Moment

Sara Jackson describes how a coworker challenged her variable named "args" by asking if Sara one year later would understand it, demonstrating how even experienced developers need reminders to write code for their future selves and teammates.

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Episode Transcript

Tired of overpaying for your cloud hosting? The good news is you don't have to migrate to bare metal and become a DevOps engineer just to save a few bucks. Instead, you can stay on your current cloud host and cut your bill in half by using Judo scale, auto scaling that actually works. Judo scale monitors your web and worker services, making sure you only pay for the resources you really need. And when their traffic spike hits, no problem. Judo Scale scales you up faster than any other auto scaler. So request timeouts and backed up job queues are a thing of the past. Judo Scale has a free plan you can use forever. So what do you have to lose? Visit judoscale.com/bikeshed for your special gift as a bike shed listener. That's judoscale.com/bikeshed. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at Thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Joelle Kenville. And today, I'm joined by fellow Thoughtbotter, Sarah Jackson. Hello. And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way. So, Sarah, what's new in your world? Well, I recently picked up one of those Woobles kits for crocheting. Those that know, know. But it is a learn to crochet by making, like, a small stuffed toy project kit. So I bought one recently. I'm a knitter. I've been knitting since high school, but crocheting, the ability to do it has always escaped me. The instructions are always too confusing. And I'm most of the way through this kit over the course of this week, and I feel like the heavens have have cleared have parted they've opened. The sky is clear. I can I can see clearly now how to crochet, and I I've been pretty successful with this kit? Do you feel like this sort of kit approach makes it more accessible to a newcomer? Absolutely. I had a little bit of hubris coming from already having experience with knitting to think that I could take on crocheting, learning to crochet by myself many times in the past. And some of the mistakes that I made then that are different compared to a kit is the material that I was using often. The kit provides a very easy to work with yarn material that doesn't split or fray. The needle that they provide as well is a four millimeter needle, which is on the, like, medium side. If you start too small, it can be really difficult. So having the right tools, you never realize how having the right tools to learn a skill really impacts it. So what you're getting here is a little bit like the Apple experience, the everything has been handpicked to work together so that your experience as a whole feels very smooth. Absolutely. It's it was very seamless. The the instructions, they made a number of very short videos walking you through literally every single step …

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Books, tools, and gear mentioned in this episode

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Tools

  • GraphQLRecommended
    mature apps modifying existing endpoints need tools like Zod or GraphQL schemas from the start to prevent production bugs from breaking changes across front-end and back-end teams.
  • Ruby on RailsRecommended
    Convention over configuration advantage: Ruby on Rails bridges greenfield and mature modalities by providing standard patterns where developers immediately know controllers live in controllers folders.
  • ZodRecommended
    mature apps modifying existing endpoints need tools like Zod or GraphQL schemas from the start to prevent production bugs from breaking changes across front-end and back-end teams.

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