"I've learned to never ever badmouth a weird architecture in a working and profitable company."
I learned that lesson myself earlier this year. A client had a system that was just so ... wrong, I found myself thinking I'd made a terrible choice of project, and initially marvelled at the fact that the company simply survived.
I stuck it out because it was a short-term engagement and eventually learned that they'd solved an "unsolvable" problem, one that I'd tried myself and seen dozens of other attempts at, all eventual and apparently inevitiable failures. But this place, by ignorance or genius, seemed to make the wrong decision at every step, and did it.
Not to say that I agree with "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" all the time, but when you see something done wrong in a new way, make sure that you extract what you can from it and you might be surprised at what you'll learn.
I learned that lesson myself earlier this year. A client had a system that was just so ... wrong, I found myself thinking I'd made a terrible choice of project, and initially marvelled at the fact that the company simply survived.
I stuck it out because it was a short-term engagement and eventually learned that they'd solved an "unsolvable" problem, one that I'd tried myself and seen dozens of other attempts at, all eventual and apparently inevitiable failures. But this place, by ignorance or genius, seemed to make the wrong decision at every step, and did it.
Not to say that I agree with "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" all the time, but when you see something done wrong in a new way, make sure that you extract what you can from it and you might be surprised at what you'll learn.