Eric joined the server meeting and we were talking about the sales tax aggregates and what kind of love is needed there. It's up, working, and just needs a little bit to really be fully functional. We talked about getting that code outside of the database triggers and being able to do manual or force updates. We spent 40 minutes going over pros and cons of automated database triggers, manual switches, scheduled tasks, and how best to tackle the aggregate counts, totals, and sums. We only have a few things aggregated right now, but a ton more options are on the horizon.

We then switched to the backend and frontend frameworks that we are looking into. We got into a conversation about technical debt (older or legacy code) and where we are headed. We really want to move more into an MVC (model, view, controller) type framework and application. We would like to change the main structure and underlying conventions that we are built upon. This brought up conversations about breaking the link between view pages, model pages, and controller pages.

Cory was saying that we beat the odds of how long we have lasted on our older code set, and lifecycle as a software company. We are really good at building new things. We would like to get better at planning and strategically doing maintenance and upgrades to the core and/or foundation. Ideally, we want to take some of our older, bigger, monolith code and break it up into smaller and smaller pieces. Things like helper files, microservices, MVC models, and restful API sockets. We already do a bunch of that, but the whole thing is not yet fully there.

Our guys (developers) keep running into things that are slightly off and/or could be changed. Sometimes, that makes them slowdown and either figure out what was done and/or them wanting to fix it, to make it smoother or better. There is a maintenance cost associated with training and learning. Sometimes you only learn by dinking around and playing with things (experiments and trystorming).

We may need to get some funding in place, even to help make the plan. This has been one of the things that has been missing all along (lack of funding). Sometimes, it also feels like we need some fresh blood (new energy or new talent). We are all getting a little bit older and have been pulling this load for quite some time now. That ends up wearing on you, even if that wasn't the intent. As long as we are talking about some ideals, we would love for our code to be more robust, less fragile, and easier to make global changes. There are a lot of intricate and moving pieces. As an idea, maybe we trim our team down and keep a smaller, highly talented, but nimble developer team. We are not sure where to go. It's always a balance.

Steve was asking Wayne some great questions. We are trying to figure out a plan for making the plan. It gets deep quickly. Steve was also asking about the datasource project and where that stands (looking for a progress report).