Chapter 27. Five Tips for Taking Over a Legacy Application

Let`s continue discussing the topic of taking over a legacy application. It's one of the dirty little secrets in the freelance world that a high percentage of the projects that you'll be asked to work on are actually legacy applications, which means that you'll be taking over or working with other developers on pre-existing apps.

There have been a number of times where I've had great experiences taking over a legacy application. Notably I was hired a few years ago to work on a legacy app for Eventbrite, and I was very pleased to find a very well configured codebase. It only took me about a week to become familiar with the inner workings of the application, and I could start building new features right away, it was a great experience.

However, that rarely occurs, typically freelancers are taking over a legacy application because the previous developer was fired from the project or due to the app owner...