What successful conversion/rewrite of software hav

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What successful conversion/rewrite have you done of software you were involved with? What where the languages and framework involved in the process? How large was the software in question? Finally what is the top one or two thing you learned from being involved with the process.

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Answer 1

We had a code generation tool in our application framework that was used to read in text-based data files, About 20 other applications made use of it.

We wanted to make use of XML data files instead of structured text-based files. The original code was quite outdated and difficult to maintain. We replaced this tool by a combination of XSLT scripts and a utility library. For the utility library we could make use of some code in the old tool.

The result was that all 20 applications could now make use of either the obsolete text based file format or the new XML based format. We also delivered a conversion-generation tool that converted old data files to new XML data files.

After bringing out one or two release we have now decided that we will no longer support the old text based format and everybody is able to convert their data to XML.

We did hardly have to do manual conversions,

Answer 2

Ported a simulation written in Fortran 77 (despite being written in the 90s) to C/Java because the original only worked on small data sets. I learned to love big O notation after several times of explaining why just moving the entire data table into memory at the start of the program was not going to scale.

Answer 3

Converting theoretically portable C code into theoretically portable C code across architectures to support a hardware change that saves the company X dollars per unit.

The size varies - this is a common need, and I've done small and large projects.

I learned to write more portable C code. Elegance is great, but when it comes right down to it the compiler takes care of performance, and the code should be as simple and portable as possible.

Answer 4

I ported a client server Powerbuilder app, a couple of hundred screens worth, into an ASP.NET app (C#).

Due to performance and maintainability issues, I had over the previous year moved a ton of embedded SQL out of Powerbuilder scripts and into stored procedures.

Although this would make a lot of you wince, having a lot of business logic in the database, it mean the Powerbuilder app was relatively "light" and when we built the .Net front end, it could take advantage of the SQL codebase and have a lot of functionality already built and tested.

Not saying I'd recommend building apps that way, but it certainly worked to our advantage in this instance.

Answer 5

I ported/redesigned/rewrote a 30,000-line MS-DOS C++ program into a similar-length but much more fully-featured and usable Java Swing program.

I learned never to take another job involving C++ or Java.

Answer 6

I am doing a rewrite of an Inhouse Project managment system to a more standard MVC model. Its in the LAMP stack (PHP) and i am close to the 1st milestone.

The things i have learned from that currently is how simple the program feels at the beginning and i tried to not add complexity until i have to.

Example is that i programmed all the functionality first (like i was an admin user) and then when that is sorted out, add the complexity of having restrictions (user levels etc)