Mishka Kofman spent 28 years in software, from Madden at EA to AWS, and now rebuilds legacy systems for a living. AI made code cheap to write. His warning: it did nothing to make code cheap to keep, and most owners cannot see what their technical debt is costing them.
Before you hire another admin
A three minute scorecard. See how much of that next hire is repetitive work a system could take off your plate.
Take the scorecardMishka Kofman has been writing software for 28 years, from Madden at EA to AWS. Today he runs Paracorp and builds ARC, a platform that modernizes legacy software by pulling out every business rule and rebuilding the system around them.
His warning for owners: AI made code cheap to write, and it did nothing to make code cheap to keep. Teams are shipping faster than ever and creating debt faster than ever, and most leaders cannot see what it is costing them.
His rule for build versus buy is simple. Buy what is not central to you. Build what holds your business rules and gives you an edge.
In this episode
- Why he left steady employment to build Paracorp
- What AWS and EA each taught him about how teams should run
- Why every decision should be written down, and what that does for AI
- Whether a product owner should read the team's retro notes
- Technical debt in the AI era, and why cheap code is not cheap to keep
- The house that keeps adding rooms while the foundation moves
- Rebuilding software from its business rules
- What he finds in every legacy codebase he opens
- Build versus buy, and keeping what holds your business rules
- How he wins over engineers who do not want AI touching their code
- Who should not modernize right now
Timestamps
- 00:00Intro
- 01:08Why he started Paracorp
- 03:19What AWS and EA taught him
- 05:30Teams that run without top down orders
- 07:12Why every decision gets written down
- 08:57Should the product owner read the retro notes?
- 12:36Technical debt in the AI era
- 14:20Cheap to write, not cheap to keep
- 16:48The house that keeps adding rooms
- 20:04What ARC does
- 23:27Business rules are the software
- 24:37How you avoid breaking things
- 27:40What he finds in every legacy codebase
- 29:40Build versus buy now
- 32:17Merging three apps into one
- 33:43Adding features during a modernization
- 35:37Dev teams that do not want AI touching their code
- 38:57Who should not modernize right now
- 40:44What is next for Paracorp and ARC
- 44:05Where to find Mishka
About Mishka Kofman
Mishka Kofman is the founder of Paracorp and the builder of ARC, the Architecture Refactoring Coordinator. He has spent 28 years in software, including Madden at EA and AWS, and runs workshops on using AI to write predictable, maintainable code.
Paracorp paracorp.io
ARC try-arc.com