s19e09: Two Easy Pieces

0.0 Context Setting

Friday, 4 April 2025 in Portland, Oregon where the sun is out.

0.1 Events: Hallway Track

No Hallway Tracks on the slate at the moment. But I have a few ideas I’m pulling together:

• Something to do with COBOL
• Something to do with ATProto
• Something to do with the viability of a left-wing media ecosystem

Drop me a line if you’ve got Hallway Tracks you’d like to see.

1.0 Some Things That Caught My Attention

1.1 Understanding Legacy System Modernization

Here is a high-level analogy that might be helpful to some of you in trying to get certain people to understand why modernizing a legacy system is hard.

And for this, let’s just assume that “a legacy system” is to be honest anything older than, what, 10 years? Maybe even 5.

Oh, right. The other thing about this explaining-analogy is that it really hits home if the audience has any experience with home ownership:

Homeownership is a lifelong commitment to discovering what it takes to modernize a legacy system, and the lengths to which and compromises you will make in doing so 1

Homeownership is a lifelong commitment to discovering what it takes to modernize a legacy