As I walked through the awe-inspiring corridors of Vatican City, surrounded by centuries-old sculptures, towering columns, and intricate architecture that has withstood the weight of time, I found myself humbled—not just as a visitor, but as an engineer.
These civil engineering marvels—domes that once defied gravity, statues placed so precisely they seem to float, and buildings carved with reverence and permanence—reminded me that legacy, in its truest form, is not a burden. It is a benchmark.
In today’s engineering culture, particularly in software, the word “legacy” often comes with a sigh. Legacy code. Legacy systems. Legacy tools. It’s almost synonymous with “outdated,” “hard to maintain,” or “ready to be replaced.” But maybe—just maybe—we need to reframe what legacy truly means.
Legacy is What We Build So Others Can Build Further
As I looked up at the majestic ceiling of St. Peter’s Basilica, I realized: no one dismisses the Sistine Chapel as “legacy art.” No one calls Michelangelo’s David “legacy sculpture.” These structures and creations are admired, protected, and preserved—not because they’re flawless, but because they were once breakthroughs of human creativity and technical ambition.
The same is true for software engineering.
The AI tools we build today, the cloud systems we launch with a few keystrokes, the frameworks that allow real-time collaboration across continents—all of them exist because someone before us toiled to write the first compiler, debug the first protocol, and build the first data center. These contributions may not always be elegant by today’s standards, but they are nothing short of architectural marvels in their own right.
I can personally attest to this. When I was helping to build Exchange Online at Microsoft, “cloud” wasn’t even a buzzword yet. We were working with virtualized hardware and distributed systems, not knowing we were laying the groundwork for what would become the modern era of cloud computing. One of the most exciting projects I led was DMS (Data Center Management System)—a platform that would automatically detect when an Exchange server was experiencing failures, spin up a new virtual server to replace it, and begin repairing the faulty one in the background.
At the time, we discovered that 32% of our Exchange systems were self-healing based on the logic we’d built. It felt like an engineering marvel, even if we didn’t yet know how transformative it would become. In hindsight, some of those learnings likely seeded ideas that would later mature in Azure and other cloud platforms. We were simply trying to scale systems, solve problems, and keep things running, not realizing we were writing the early chapters of what others would later call the cloud revolution.
From Cathedrals to Codebases: The Endurance of Thoughtful Engineering
When you build something thoughtfully—whether it’s a basilica that draws millions of visitors or a software platform used by millions of users—you’re making a bet on endurance. You’re saying, “This matters enough to outlive me.” And while not all systems are meant to last forever, some are meant to evolve rather than be erased.
Today’s engineering culture loves iteration. We value speed, agility, and constant evolution—and rightfully so. But in doing so, let’s not forget that the things that inspire us most were rarely built overnight.
They were layered, revisited, strengthened, and yes, sometimes patched. But they stood—and still stand—not just because they were built, but because they were respected.
We Stand on the Shoulders of Giants
The next time we scoff at legacy code or grumble about maintaining old systems, let’s take a step back and consider:
What will someone say about what we built ten or twenty years from now?
Will they see the intent, the ingenuity, the challenge we faced at the time?
Will they improve upon it with respect, or rewrite it with disdain?
Because here’s the truth: every system we build today is a future legacy. And it’s up to us to decide whether that legacy is something worth preserving.
Closing Thoughts from Vatican City
Standing among the grand architecture of Vatican City, I didn’t just feel awe—I felt a responsibility. A reminder that as engineers, whether building cathedrals of stone or codebases of logic, we are not just solving problems—we are leaving behind paths for others to walk.
Legacy isn’t what holds us back—it’s what holds us up.
Let’s honor it. Let’s learn from it. Let’s continue to build with the intention that what we create may one day be visited, admired, and learned from by those who come after us.
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