diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index 177d538..23e88a3 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -29,7 +29,7 @@ The tricky part is that the previous author may not have experienced a high cogn It is likely that the previous author(s) created this huge mess one tiny increment at a time, not all at once. So you are the first person who has ever had to try to make sense of it all at once.

In my class I describe a sprawling SQL stored procedure we were looking at one day, with hundreds of lines of conditionals in a huge WHERE clause. Someone asked how anyone could have let it get this bad. I told them: “When there are only 2 or 3 conditionals, adding another one doesn’t make any difference. By the time there are 20 or 30 conditionals, adding another one doesn’t make any difference!”

There is no “simplifying force” acting on the code base other than deliberate choices that you make. Simplifying takes effort, and people are too often in a hurry.

- Thanks to Dan North for his comment.

+ Thanks to Dan North for his comment above.

Once you onboard new people on your project, try to measure the amount of confusion they have (pair programming may help). If they're confused for more than ~40 minutes in a row - you've got things to improve.