Finding a link / quote / source on code maintenance
I have a vague recollection that back in college one of my professors said something about the fact that after just 3 weeks (on average), without looking at the code of the program, research showed that the author of the original program did not work for any benefit c / does not support this code against a developer who has never seen the code.
Backtracking I want to find the source for this statement, but I can't find it anywhere. Am I hallucinating? Or can someone point me in the right direction?
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Strictly speaking from my personal experience, I would call this expression stupid. I went back many times to code that I had written months before and still had a much better idea of what / why / where / how I could have with any random piece of third-party code.
As for the source:
"Any custom code that you haven't had for six months or more has also been written by someone else."
Eglesson's Law - Who exactly was / is the Eglesson in question is not obvious.
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I found this statement to be true, but the time in question is variable. I have heard 4 weeks to 6 months.
I can tell you from personal experience that I was just dragged to the "exnecy" project from a project I worked on for over a year. I spent about a month on an "emergency" project and when I went back to my old project, things were a little fuzzy. I didn't completely lose touch with the old project, but I needed to take a minute and remember where I left off, what I finished, what I left doing, etc.
Unfortunately I cannot point to a definitive answer. I think this is more a spoken conversation than an actual proven fact. I do recall that my college professors told me the same thing, although they never quoted the actual source / author for it.
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I think 3 weeks are wrong. I never read or remembered that after 3 weeks someone new has the original author.
Of course, I won't be comfortable for 3 weeks, I would be several hours / days after just writing the code, but 3 weeks is pretty low. Maybe 1 year is the best time to see less difference and still ... After you read your own code and your own comment again, you usually remember what and why the code is written in a certain way. A new person won't understand the deep meaning of all your code as quickly as the original author ...
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