Dave Thomas on Innovating Legacy Systems

A LARGE SHARE of software engineering education (I include Software Engineering Radio among the guilty parties) focuses on new and emerging technologies and methodologies, and most of the thinking around modeling and design is aimed at green field projects. Yet in practice, organizations spend most of their resources modifying existing code, some of which is quite old. As an organization grows, the accumulated body of work grows, and the proportion of the organization's accumulated capital in old technology grows along with it. The tradeoffs and constraints facing developers as they work with legacy systems is the theme of episode 242, in which host Sven Johann speaks with ACM Distinguished Member, entrepreneur, and researcher Dave Thomas. © 2016 IEEE.