Learning the Hard Way: Tackling Technical Debt and Legacy Systems Early On

One of the defining features of my early career was being thrown headfirst into the murky waters of legacy systems and technical debt. During my time at Brightside, I faced problems that many developers don’t encounter until much later in their careers—and it shaped the way I think about software design to this day.

The most vivid example? A VB6 file so large that our IDE would crash when trying to open it. We had to manually strip it down just to make edits. That kind of limitation wasn't just frustrating—it was eye-opening. It taught me that technical debt isn’t just about outdated syntax or ugly code. It’s about how fragility, poor structure, and size can actively block progress.

Brightside gave me an invaluable education in what not to do, but also the opportunity to explore how to do it better. I began pushing for cleaner code structures, introducing object-oriented principles into a PHP codebase that was entirely procedural when I arrived. This wasn’t just about code elegance—it was about maintainability, testability, and scale.

The technical challenges extended into our automation efforts. At the time, our QTP (QuickTest Professional) test suite was a serial monolith, taking far too long to execute. I designed a microservice-based solution that allowed us to distribute test runs across multiple machines. It reduced execution time and opened the door to a more scalable approach to testing.

These early experiences gave me a deep appreciation for the hidden costs of technical decisions. The temptation to cut corners or delay refactors may offer short-term gains, but it compounds over time, leading to brittle systems that resist change.

Now, in every role I take on, I push for consistency, scalability, and clarity in design. I help teams understand that technical debt isn't just a problem for tomorrow—it’s a risk today. And I’ve seen firsthand that it’s much easier to prevent debt than to pay it back under pressure.

Those early days at Brightside made one thing clear: dealing with legacy code is inevitable. But how you choose to respond—by accepting the mess or by pushing for better—can define your trajectory as an engineer.