The ending is pure gold. Some of the best times in my career were working on a codebase for an application serving folks I knew on a first name basis and had had lunch with.

I could talk through pain points they were having, we’d come up with a solution together, I’d hack up a quick prototype and launch it just to them to try out. We’d tweak it over a couple of weeks and when it was good I’d launch it to all customers.

Messy, ugly code base. But it worked well because it wasn’t over-managed. Just developers doing development. Amazing what happens when you get out of the way of smart, talented people and let them do their work.