I’m just a scripting monkey for a systems engineering/admin team, but I have one system integration that is being fireman carried by a ton of my code. I’ve since learned that there are entire consulting companies built off selling a slightly expanded version of what I’ve one man army’d together. Maybe I overestimate my skill, but I feel qualified to talk about large projects and long term sustainability.

I’m convinced that people who talk about things like backwards compatibility as if it’s super difficult just aren’t willing to try. I won’t say shit like that is super easy, but it’s not black magic.

I think there’s a lot of programmers out there more interested in building shit than ensuring any sort of quality, that it’ll be maintainable longer than the next code review, or in thinking about any downstream effects of their code beyond the limited scope they’re developing in. Stuff like backwards compat is largely just another design pattern in a sea of them that you learn through experience. But you have to try it to learn what works and what doesn’t. Go try folks.