What makes code legacy?

Question

I have heard many developers refer to code as \"legacy\". Most of the time it is code that has been written by someone who no longer works on the project. What is it that ma

Answer 1

Any code with support (or documentation) missing. Be it:

• inline comments
• technical documentation
• spoken documentation (the person who wrote it)
• unit tests documenting the workings of the code

Answer 2

Preserving legacy code is not so much an academic ideal as it is keeping code that works, no matter how poorly. In many conservative enterprise situations, that would be considered more practical than throwing it away and starting again from scratch. Better the devil you know...

Answer 3

It's often any code that isn't written in the trendy scripting language du jour, and I'm only half joking.