Social Security systems contain tens of millions of lines of code written in COBOL, an archaic programming language. Safely rewriting that code would take years—DOGE wants it done in months.
Refactoring a code base is kinda like general maintenance for the application. Over time deprecated features, temp fixes, etc. start to be a lot of the code base. By cleaning things up you can make it more maintainable, efficient, etc.
That being said, for systems this large you usually fix up parts of it and iterate over time. Trying to do the whole code base is hard cause it’s like replacing the engine while the car is in motion.
Refactoring a code base is kinda like general maintenance for the application. Over time deprecated features, temp fixes, etc. start to be a lot of the code base. By cleaning things up you can make it more maintainable, efficient, etc.
That being said, for systems this large you usually fix up parts of it and iterate over time. Trying to do the whole code base is hard cause it’s like replacing the engine while the car is in motion.
refactor is one thing, rewrite everything in a new language is another thing.
Yet it’s the thing every junior dev wants to do as they gain more experience.
Right after they write yet another content management system.
Oh yeah, definitely.