Russ Olsen: The Hidden Cost of Forgetting Why the Code Looks Like That

Russ Olsen: The Hidden Cost of Forgetting Why the Code Looks Like That

From Maintainable by Robby Russell

March 31, 2026 · 55 min · Episode 220

About this episode

Russ Olsen joins Robby to discuss the importance of documentation and maintainability in software development.

Russ Olsen joins Robby to talk about maintainability, trade-offs, and why so many teams forget to document what they decided not to do. It’s a conversation about legacy systems, rewrites, developer quality of life, and the stories software teams need to tell each other better.

People in this episode

Host: Robby Russell

Guest: Russ Olsen

Topics covered

  • maintainability
  • trade-offs
  • documentation
  • legacy systems
  • developer quality of life
  • software teams

Keywords

  • maintainability
  • documentation
  • legacy systems
  • developer quality of life
  • software teams
  • trade-offs

More episodes of Maintainable

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Maintainable podcast page.