Legacy Code May Be The Friend We Haven't Met Yet / Matt Hogg FYI
In web development it’s a common trope that working with legacy code is considered boring, painful, or even beneath us. Only the shiniest new framework or tech stack will do! The truth, however, is that legacy code is impossible to avoid. But don’t worry, that’s actually a good thing.
React has been all the rage for about 7 years, but it's in use on only 2% of all websites. The story’s the same for Vue and others. For all their hype, the opportunity to work somewhere that’s using React or Vue in the wild is incredibly niche and privileged!
WordPress, on the other hand, serves up 42% of the web. jQuery is an outcast nowadays, but is still found on a staggering 78% of all websites. Or maybe you’ve heard of COBOL? About 80% of the code running the world—that’s payroll systems, ATMs, traffic lights, and so on—is written in COBOL. That’s over 220 billion lines of COBOL, and nobody ever talks about it.
Hell, if one wanted to make truly serious money it’d be far better to be a COBOL programmer yanked out of retirement. React seems downright quaint by comparison.
