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Your Engineers Aren't Lazy, Your Codebase Is Punishing Them (piechowski.io)
submitted 1 month ago by codeinabox@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev
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A client’s team spent a full week adding a CSV export to their admin panel. Two engineers, clear requirements, maybe a day of actual work. The rest of the time went to understanding existing code well enough to change it safely. That’s what I call codebase drag: when the codebase makes every task take longer than it should. It doesn’t show up in any dashboard or sprint report.

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[-] the_radness@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

15+ years in engineering here. 10+ in leadership.

Code formatting hasn't been an issue since the early '10s. Tabs or spaces? Who cares. Your editor can make it look like whatever you want and it won't effect the code.

As for other asshole-ish behavior or gatekeeping, I open it up to a vote. Let the team determine best practices. Don't like what your team decides? Find another team to shitlord over.

this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2026
203 points (99.5% liked)

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