What is empathy-driven software development?

Andrea Goulet advocates for approaching legacy code with empathy — understanding the context and constraints under which it was written. Rather than blaming previous developers, teams should focus on understanding and improving the code compassionately.

How does Andrea Goulet approach legacy code modernization?

Andrea's company Corgibytes specializes in software remodeling, treating code improvement like home renovation. She recommends assessing the codebase's current state, prioritizing improvements by business impact, and making steady incremental progress.

What does Andrea Goulet say about the language we use around technical debt?

Andrea emphasizes that how we talk about legacy code matters. Using terms like 'remodeling' instead of 'rewriting' and framing improvements as investments rather than cleanup helps get organizational buy-in for maintenance work.

Andrea Goulet - Empathy-Driven Software Development

Robby has a chat with Andrea Goulet, the CEO of Corgibytes, a software development shop dedicated to maintaining and modernizing software applications. Named by LinkedIn as one of the top ten professionals in software under 35, Andrea is the host of the podcast Legacy Code Rocks, is the author of the forthcoming book, “Empathy-Driven Software Development”, has co-founded several successful technology companies, and has taught over 50,000 students how to turn soft skills like empathy and communication into software skills.

Through her newest venture, Heartware.dev, she is on a mission to operationalize empathy for tech teams and keynotes frequently about building a business based on balance, empathy, and trust; the perils of the technical/non-technical divide; and the technical philosophies around working with legacy code. Andrea says that the maintainability of software comes down to trust and while she doesn't find the term technical debt useful, she uses it in instances where it’s being widely used especially in software remodeling projects. From her experience, the term is not useful at all when dealing with business-minded people who view debt differently.

She points out that the success of a project is always highly dependent on the project owner and the team working on their project having shared goals as they approach the writing of software. Robby and Andrea will also dive into why we should avoid deferring to other people and defaulting to being ticket takers, how empathy has different definitions, avoiding us vs them thinking, and so much more. Stay tuned and enjoy!