Raw capture — raw/ally-piechowski.md

url: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Mar/6/ally-piechowski/ title: "Ally Piechowski: How to Audit a Rails Codebase" author: Ally Piechowski (quoted by Simon Willison) date_fetched: 2026-07-11 date_published: 2026-03-06

Ally Piechowski: How to Audit a Rails Codebase

Quoted on Simon Willison's Weblog, March 6, 2026. Tags: rails, software-engineering, technical-debt.

The Quote

Ally Piechowski's diagnostic questions for auditing a Rails codebase, organized by audience:

For developers: - "What's the one area you're afraid to touch?" - "When's the last time you deployed on a Friday?" - "What broke in production in the last 90 days that wasn't caught by tests?"

For CTOs / Engineering Managers: - "What feature has been blocked for over a year?" - "Do you have real-time error visibility right now?" - "What was the last feature that took significantly longer than estimated?"

For business stakeholders: - "Are there features that got quietly turned off and never came back?" - "Are there things you've stopped promising customers?"