Would you ever think a hand grenade thrown wouldn’t break, damage or destroy something? I think in software we tend to fight with grenades, blasting our way through things we don’t like.

Have you ever watched a war movie where the troops roll in and they start lobbing grenades, firing rockets, shooting first then asking questions and at the end of it all you see a “relief effort” swoop in and rebuild? No. After the dust has settled all you see is a bunch of broken stuff.

I feel like that matches the pattern of some of our dev-mentality. We go in with the intent of saving the village and all we do is cause a considerable amount of collateral damage then bail assuming there will be some sort of relief effort (QA perhaps).

Why do we sometime fight with hand grenades instead of knives; more like the tank and less like the ninja? It might be the glory of the battle or the sweet taste of victory (at least as far as the fight goes ); who really knows?

All software needs some degree of refactoring and sometimes huge reworks are a sound way to rid yourself of a looming / annoying problem area - but try to start by using a knife not a grenade / iteration not search and replace.

The idea… solving problems should be iterative not mass-blasting with collateral results.