# How we de-risked our editor upgrade

DevFeed: [How we de-risked our editor upgrade](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/how-we-de-risked-our-editor-upgrade-33520.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.aha.io/engineering/articles/derisking-editor-upgrade>)

Published: 2025-10-08T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Aha! Engineering Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/aha-engineering-blog.md>)

Topics: [upgrade](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/upgrade.md>), [Development](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/development.md>), [Library](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/library.md>), [legacy](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/legacy.md>)

Tags: [browser](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/browser.md>), [development](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/development.md>), [legacy](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/legacy.md>), [library](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/library.md>), [upgrade](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/upgrade.md>)

## AI overview

The article explains how a team managed the risks of upgrading a collaborative text editor built on Slate. It describes the problems caused by relying on a deprecated Slate version and maintaining a fork, including browser-related breakages and difficult-to-debug code.

## Source excerpt

Any seasoned software engineer will tell you that full rewrites are a bad idea. More often than not, they are abandoned after wasting a significant amount of resources on them. This is especially true if what you're pitching for a rewrite is the bac