Coders, how often do you get to write new stuff?

In My Humble Opinion
1

As compared with supporting existing legacy projects.

I spend a lot of my time working on a program initially written in 1989* most of the rest patching and adding to an existing application. Occasionally I get to write a program from scratch, but that’s easily less than 5% of my work.
So who gets to write cool new stuff in Java/C#/Python and who’s stuck a in a boring old C/C++/VB world?

*I bet some COBOL old timer will trump that by at least ten years.

2

I’d say about half my work nowadays is patching/adding to old code in C/C++, and half is writing new code in Python. I don’t know if I’d call that new code “cool”, though. We just went through a process where we replaced thousands of lines of legacy C code with Python to bring it more up-to-date.

Ed

3

I do a mix of maintenance and new code, but it is mainly in RPGLE on an AS400/Iseries. So C++ & VB do not sound so boring to me.

I will be doing some apps and reports in a tool call WebSmart at least. I look forward to doing more.

Jim {BTW: I started in a COBOL shop as the youngster doing COBOL to RPG conversions.}

4

My release cycles tend to alternate between adding new features quickly and fixing them, so the amount of new code I do depends a lot on where I am in the larger cycle. I’ve done everything from 100% new code to 100% maintenance over the course of the past couple years.

Not a COBOL coder, but I do use some code going back to 1987.

5

The answer is to work for a start up. It’s all new and fun.
Don’t be a wage slave if you have vision. You can get a better job. They are out there.

6

Well, I fall into neither of your categories. I write in C++ and primarily write new code.

7

I’m in a startup, so I write just about all new code.

I don’t think I could stand just maintaining a legacy code base.

Most of my career I’ve spent writing new code. In fact, I can’t think of any job I’ve had that wasn’t primarily new code.

I think According to Pliny has a point. To take it one step further, work for a software company, not a place where the primary focus is something other than software. I’ve always found jobs where the software is the main company focus to be WAY better than working for a bank/hospital/whatever that has an IT department with a couple coder positions.

8

I write Perl scripts to analyze data, so in a sense all of it is new - except when I’m maintaining my own stuff. But I steal a lot from my own code, which makes stuff go a lot faster. My goal is to develop eht Borges’ Library methodology - have a collection of scripts that do all possible analyses and tranformations on the data I see, so coding becomes just cutting and pasting existing stuff.

9

And I fall into neither of those categories for the exact opposite reason. I mainly support existing C# code.