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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Sustainable Software"
+date: 2023-10-12 13:37:00
+categories:
+  - development
+---
+I've been tossing the idea of Sustainable Software back and forth in my mind for over a decade, possibly even
+longer than that.
+
+By now, I've been working as a professional software engineer for more than 17 years, for a
+wide variety of companies, most of whom have standardised around different technology stacks. I've used PHP,
+Go, JavaScript, Ruby, Python; even some Perl, though I definitely wouldn't claim to be current in all of them.
+
+I've also worked with a number of different project management techniques, from extremely formalised approaches
+like PRINCE2, to more agile-focused ones like Scrum and Shape Up. I definitely have a preference towards the
+lighter touch approaches, however!
+
+Throughout all of this time, the idea that software development should be _sustainable_ has stuck with me. Whilst
+there are times when, as a team, you need to pull out all of the stops in order to deliver a key feature in a very
+tight timescale, this definitely should not be the norm. Not unless you want to see a high rate of attrition amongst
+your engineers and a significant accumulation of technical debt, that is. And if you do want those things... I don't
+think there's anything I could say that would convince you otherwise.
+
+<!--more-->
+
+To me, sustainable software engineering is about making the right decisions for the long term health of your product
+and of your team. It's about keeping the quality high; it's about being able to build software that is future-proof,
+that can adapt to the ever-changing needs of your team, your company, and your customers, whether they be internal or
+external.
+
+As such, there's no single prescribed way to achieve sustainability. Your team is different to my team, and both are
+different to other teams. I don't know the environment in which you're working, what your constraints are in terms of
+time and budget. The technology stack you're working with also influences these decisions, and you may not have the
+option to change that either.
+
+That being said, I firmly believe that you'll enjoy more success if you avoid bleeding edge technology as much as is
+humanly possible. I've read [Dan McKinley's awesome "Choose Boring Technology" essay](https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology)
+(and if you haven't, make sure you set aside the time to do so). Adopting the latest and greatest is *fun*, of course,
+and it definitely scratches an itch most of us engineers feel from time-to-time, but it increases the risk of your
+product and your project getting wildly out of control and becoming unmaintainable. Choose stable tools that provide
+proven solutions, wherever you can.
+
+Try not to throw too many roadblocks in front of your team; you don't want them to become frustrated. You want them to
+be focused on delivering the best product they're capable of. Talk to your engineers. Identify their frustrations, then
+put a plan in place to mitigate them as best you can.
+
+Make sure your product is stable; you'll struggle to maintain a steady pace if you've built on sand. That means writing
+tests. It means having appropriate monitoring in place, and it means that the ever-growing backlog of bugs *must* be
+addressed regularly. Every time you prioritise new feature work over a bug ticket, you're increasing the amount of technical
+debt in your product, and it *will* catch up with you in the long run, unless your company runs out of money first.
+
+Keep your dependencies up-to-date too. If there's been a security vulnerability in one of the libraries you're using, the
+last thing you need is to first have to upgrade a whole bunch of other libraries in order to be able to get to a secure
+version again. I've been there, it's not fun.
+
+I'm undoubtedly going to have more to say on this subject, but I just wanted to finally write some of these things down
+so that I can get them out of my head.