While I am open to new ways of doing things, I am also willing to do things the old way when the situation calls for it. For this reason, I am a good fit for many software development projects involving legacy systems and legacy code.

With many years of programming experience, there is a decent chance that I was doing something the old way…back when it was the new way. For example, I have extensive experience with the Kohana framework for PHP, vanilla PHP, the Ext JS framework for JavaScript, the jQuery tool set for JavaScript, vanilla JavaScript, and the ColdFusion ecosystem. I have even taken courses in COBOL and mainframe assembly language.

I’m open to maintaining existing legacy applications or transitioning such applications to newer ecosystems. I believe this decision should be based on your needs and whether you can make a genuine business case for upgrading. If you can’t make a business case for replacing a 20-year-old system that still does exactly what you need it to do, why not keep using it?

My philosophy is that legacy systems, and doing things the new way, are not mutually exclusive. Often, there is a way to put a modern twist on a legacy system which makes it more useful in today’s world, without discarding a system which has passed the test of time. After all, rewriting a system costs money and takes time.