Saturday, June 21, 2025

GenAI is great for Understanding Legacy Code and Open Source Contribution

While GenAI can be a high speed legacy code water hose, that can be used to create tons of legacy code instantly, it's also a great tool for understanding legacy codebases and orienting yourself.  It can also be used to build ephemeral test scaffolding to get a safety net before making changes to the legacy code. 

This, IMO, is not just great for managing legacy code, it's also great for open source software. You can use GenAI to quickly understand the codebase "just enough" to make the contributions you want to make.

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