so the thing is, this is very difficult to quantify and thus talk about. It also totally depends on the size of your codebase, the size of the team, and the timeframe of the business. if anything, i would have even higher value to my current employer by being less ruthless - we have necessarily tight business windows, and as the deadline looms closer, we slide back on quality to hit it.
5 years ago i was reading code complete and all those books, and whined a lot about all the poorly factored code in its interleaved and tangled glory. I thought I was the best programmer ever and took pride in my perfectly factored little modules. As I get older, I have a lot more respect for my elders and betters - they are solving harder problems than I am, problems that if I had attempted I would have a perfectly factored solution that meets half the requirements. Is it a bitch to maintain all that Java? it sure is, but we're all well paid, and our customers are begging us to bid on proposals we don't even want.
5 years ago i was reading code complete and all those books, and whined a lot about all the poorly factored code in its interleaved and tangled glory. I thought I was the best programmer ever and took pride in my perfectly factored little modules. As I get older, I have a lot more respect for my elders and betters - they are solving harder problems than I am, problems that if I had attempted I would have a perfectly factored solution that meets half the requirements. Is it a bitch to maintain all that Java? it sure is, but we're all well paid, and our customers are begging us to bid on proposals we don't even want.