zen koans

Jul 13, 2026

The Deleted Code

A developer deleted three hundred lines that no one was using. The build broke in production. The senior developer asked, “Was the code being used?” “Yes, but by no one we knew.” “Then who was the user?” Beyond the Surface Every codebase holds ghosts. Functions nobody remembers writing. Modules that show up in no roadmap, […]

Jul 6, 2026

The TODO Comment

A developer added a comment: // TODO: fix this later. Five years later, the comment was still there. The developer had left the company. The code worked. The senior developer asked the team, “Whose TODO is this now?” No one answered. The senior added, “And what does it mean to fix something that does not […]