As software developers, we learn to abhor maintaining other people's old software. It's old, funky and brittle. In fact, we spend much of our work lives trying to kill it or at the very least marginalize its use, so we can limit our exposure to it. We pity people who have to do it.
This is what we call "legacy software".
But the word "legacy" gets a bad rap. In most other contexts, it has a positive meaning.
Maybe we're just bitter. The average life span of a software system is hardly long enough to even use the word "legacy" to describe it.
How can we turn this word around? How can we leave an actual legacy of our work as software developers?