Patterns for Dealing with Legacy Code: ServiceLoader
Legacy code is code that was not developed according to current standards of software development, is no longer maintained, and often is not or insufficiently documented. However, external, proprietary closed-source libraries often meet these criteria too. Often, this code is still operated and needs to be adapted from time to time, e.g., to comply with regulatory requirements. Legacy code often comes in the form of CLOBs. An undefined mass of lines of code, of which no one knows anymore what it does.