I have heard many developers refer to code as ‘legacy’. Most of the time it is code that has been written by someone who no longer works on the project. What is it that makes code, legacy code?
Update in response to: ‘Something handed down from an ancestor or a predecessor or from the past’ http://www.thefreedictionary.com/legacy. Clearly you wanted to know something else. Could you clarify or expand your question? S.Lott
I am looking for the symptoms of legacy code that make it unusable or a nightmare to work with. When is it better to throw it away? It is my opinion that code should be thrown away more often and that reinventing the wheel is valuable part of development. The academic ideal of not reinventing the wheel is a nice one but it is not very practical.
On the other hand there is obviously legacy code worth keeping.
By using hardware, software, APIs, languages, technologies or features that are either no longer supported or have been superceded, typically combined with little to no possibility of ever replacing that code, instead using it til it or the system dies.