How to keep a big and complex software product maintainable over the years?

Posted by chrmue on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by chrmue
Published on 2012-01-10T09:26:58Z Indexed on 2014/06/05 9:42 UTC
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maintainability

I have been working as a software developer for many years now. It has been my experience that projects get more complex and unmaintainable as more developers get involved in the development of the product.

It seems that software at a certain stage of development has the tendency to get "hackier" and "hackier" especially when none of the team members that defined the architecture work at the company any more.

I find it frustrating that a developer who has to change something has a hard time getting the big picture of the architecture. Therefore, there is a tendency to fix problems or make changes in a way that works against the original architecture. The result is code that gets more and more complex and even harder to understand.

Is there any helpful advice on how to keep source code really maintainable over the years?

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