Old code is a messy kitchen

26 Oct 2020

It’s like a messy kitchen. An old code base, I mean. You can walk in and you can try to understand it before you do things and maybe ultimately that is best I don’t know. But I like to figure it out by getting in there and puttering. There’s usually a lot of very obvious garbage to toss and even if you just move it into a corner until you better understand what is and isn’t garbage, working through that layer starts to expose the valuable bits underneath.

Usually the most frequently used stuff is at the top

I should disclaim this with saying that I’ve never worked through a hoarder situation but I’m a messy person and I’ve cleaned up after myself a lot and that’s really what I’m talking about here.

Usually the most frequently used stuff is at the top, and this is really the most valuable stuff. The first thing to do, I learned this from Colin and Grant at Vehikl, the first thing to do is make it possible for the daily work to be done well. In a kitchen you gotta get that sink cleaned.

Years and years ago I had a notion for a chore management app, and as part of my efforts on that I researched marketing efforts a bit, including stuff like finding good advertisers. Blogging was just underway and probably mommyblogger was a coined term but it was definitely a realy thing and they were a good option but also I found a site that had a calendar of steps to take to start cleaning up. Like, a set of rules and a system to work towards a less messy existence in general but house in specific. And they started with the kitchen sink and that’s rung true to me since and for myself even the one thing I try to work on is a clean sink. I don’t often get far and I certainly don’t ahve a system or schedule but

chore.tl is the triage model applied to chore management. The shit that is actually important gets bubbled to the top. I was thinking about it in the incentive/economy model which is still interesting to explore but I think probably I need to think of it from the triage model. There’s just a ton of shit to do, but is your time today best spent vacuuming (most of the time!) or maybe it is tackling that big project you’ve been putting off for months and it’s okay to skip the vacuuming this time because there’s a really good habit of it in place already that will return next cycle.

hmm.

I’ll process this guy later I guess. the whole site is busted right now anyway