Brian Nipper

As of late I have been spending a lot of time working on a “legacy” system. The term legacy means different things for different groups, in the circle I’m working with these days it means a system that is no longer being actively developed. As has been stated by mean, software isn’t “dead” it’s “done”. The catalyst for the work I’m doing is security requirements that need to be applied. While applying the updated security polices I’ve also been tasked with migrating the system from our data center to our cloud data center. As I move through the system I’m confronted with implementations that looking at now seem crazy; however, it’s these situations where it is important to apply two mindsets. One is giving others the benefit of the doubt. In a case like this, those that were working on this system used, for the time, the best options the technology stack could offer. For example, the extensive use of WCF seems silly now; however, at the time it was a recommended approach to hooki...

As I begin taking up writing again, for the third time (sighing a little to myself)... I've realized something about the way my head works. When presented with a specific task my mind will race to form a solution. When I'm present with a problem I can't seem to stop coming up with ways to solve it. When I'm given a problem at work more often than not the problem has a very small scope, often the scope of the problem at work is along the lines of accepting information/data in one area, processing/modifying said data and then saving/sending data to another area. Now when presented with a problem that can be defined with such narrow terms it is easy for me to think of quite a few different wasy of solving the problem, then when going through these various options there are often inherit sets of advantages and limitations for each solution and it becomes a simple matter of disscusing the these pros and cons with the interested parties and refining the requirements of the so...