OK, I'm not going anywhere soon (except CFDevCon tomorrow), but I have a question for the community to which I am interested to see a response.

Every single one of us (aside from the priveledged few) have legacy code which they must maintain nearly every single day of their working lives. This code can be months or even years old and reflects on you as a programmer and your level of skill then (assuming you wrote it of course).

Now, since writing this legacy you have learnt new things, you have picked up some frameworks, understood development methodologies and maybe learnt some new tools, which you know for a fact makes the applications you write now more extensible, reliable and easier to maintain.

The question is, taking into account someone must cover your wages, how do you generally go about “upgrading” your legacy code? Do you simply try to ignore it and hope your client wants a new shiny version built from the ground up? Do you replace chunks of your applications with upgraded modules? Or do you simply just use the new tools when you can (for instance, writing standalone maintenance tools).