Legacy code tends to strike fear in the hearts of developers and IT managers. This non-performant, poorly documented code is causing an innovation stand-still. Keeping all these old systems up and running can add 15 percent to an organization's budget annually. With the development of technology, it is rather inevitable that businesses will have to continue modernizing legacy systems and manage them accordingly in pursuit of ensuring their compliance with current standards and necessities. This article will uncover the problems associated with legacy code, and it must highlight here that what we consider to be known as better modernization.

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Difficulty in maintaining and scaling legacy code

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Managing legacy code presents several challenges:

• Lack of documentation: Most legacy systems do not have any kind of solid documentation, making it difficult to know what is going on just by looking at the code.
• Complex dependencies: legacy code usually has complex dependencies that are not so easily exposed.
• Outdated technologies: These systems may be written in obsolete languages and technology that no longer has a broad support.
• High technical debt: Over time, quick fixes and patches build up causing the technical debt to rise which decreases system reliability.

As a result, they can cause maintenance costs to rocket and product development life cycles to slow down along with the increased probability of more frequent system crashes.

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Tips and tricks for successful legacy code modernization

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Legacy code modernization is a mix of practices and tools to make sure the process is efficient yet successful.

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↳ Code refactoring

Refactoring is, rewriting the code into another form while maintaining its behavior. Doing this improves code readability and maintainability. Tools like SonarQube and Refactoring Guru offer guidelines and automation for code refactoring.

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↳ Automated testing

Automated tests make sure that we do not introduce new bugs or issues with our legacy code.  Tools like JUnit for Java and pytest for Python can help establish a reliable testing framework.

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↳ Code analysis tools

One of the ways you can identify problems with your legacy code is by using static code analysis tools. Tools like Coverity and Lint provide insights into code quality and potential vulnerabilities.

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↳ Incremental modernization

The ability to refactor large codebases incrementally, instead of migrating the entire system all at once. This reduces risk and allows for continuous iteration. Techniques like the Strangler Fig Pattern can be effective in this process.

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↳ Code understanding solutions

Good code understanding solutions are critical for your sort of behavior to ease the navigation, or orchestration efforts required in a complex legacy system. For example, Augoor offers code documentation beyond just comments and the ability to navigate through complex system dependencies much better and thus reduce more technical debt. Using Augoor helps organizations to increase maintainability in their legacy systems.

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Improved maintainability and reduced technical debt

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Adopting these strategies can go a long way in making the legacy systems more maintainable and technical debt smaller. Benefits include:

• Refactoring and automated testing improve the overall quality of the codebase.
• With better documentation and code quality, the time and resources required for maintenance are reduced.
• Improved code maintainability and reduced technical debt lead to quicker development and deployment cycles.

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