Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner - Heat (1995)
So Gregor Hophe is seeing design patterns in Starbucks. As for me, I'm seeing software practices (I am not using the term "Principles" because of this) in movies. The quote in the subtitle is probably my favorite. It is taken from Michael Mann's Heat where Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) says it twice. Neil uses this line to explain how professional criminals like him should treat the relationships that ties them to the real, honest, life.
I think this goes to programmers as well. We should be willing to walk out on any piece of code the minute we understand it becomes a liability. Every line/method/class is a viable candidate to being eradicated as part of a wide scope refactoring. In other words
Note that this goes not only to source code. If you are doing too much up front design you are likely to get attached to diagrams/blue prints/specs. Neal Ford calls it irrational artifact attachment.
Individuals who do not follow Neil McCauley's discipline get attached to their past work. They think that some piece of code is so well written or so central to the inner workings of the program that they only allow small patches to be applied to it. They never get to see that what is really needed is a substantial refactoring. This often leads to code that is a big mess of hacks piled up on top of something they are not emotionally ready to get rid of.
I think this goes to programmers as well. We should be willing to walk out on any piece of code the minute we understand it becomes a liability. Every line/method/class is a viable candidate to being eradicated as part of a wide scope refactoring. In other words
Don't let yourself write any code fragment you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the technical debt payment coming around the corner
Note that this goes not only to source code. If you are doing too much up front design you are likely to get attached to diagrams/blue prints/specs. Neal Ford calls it irrational artifact attachment.
Individuals who do not follow Neil McCauley's discipline get attached to their past work. They think that some piece of code is so well written or so central to the inner workings of the program that they only allow small patches to be applied to it. They never get to see that what is really needed is a substantial refactoring. This often leads to code that is a big mess of hacks piled up on top of something they are not emotionally ready to get rid of.
That's a good reference; I never thought I'd hear a quote from "Heat" applied to software development.
Perhaps another variation can come from an old adage: "If you love someone, set them free", which might become: "If you love some code, don't be afraid to delete it." (?)
Daniel Wellman
September 6, 2009 at 5:36 PM"If you love someone, set them free" - So now we can claim that Sting is a programmer....
Unknown
September 6, 2009 at 5:47 PM