Miss Havisham’s Legacy Code

Nobody Dares Touch the Build System

Charles Dickens · 12 June 2026

“I have seen so much done, that it would be strange if I could be surprised by a Perl CGI application.”

A gloomy but practical guide to maintaining legacy systems, surviving inherited technical debt, and understanding why some applications seem emotionally incapable of modernisation.

Contents

1. Chapter 1: Great Expectations of Refactoring
2. Chapter 2: The Wedding Cake Deployment Strategy
3. Chapter 3: Estella Reviews the Build Scripts
4. Chapter 4: Pip Encounters Technical Debt

Published by Austenpunk, the distinguished imprint for engineers who believe that every production incident would be improved by a stronger sense of narrative irony.

This essential volume combines literary feeling, technical anxiety, and just enough documentation to suggest that somebody once understood the system.