Zen and the Art of Merging Code
A configuration file grew over the years to two thousand lines. A developer asked the senior, “Why are all of these settings here?” The senior answered, “Each one was once a question someone could not answer.” “And now?” “Now they are questions no one remembers asking.” Unpacking the Teaching Every line in that file started […]
A developer announced excitedly that they had rewritten the project in the newest framework. The senior developer asked, “What does it do now that it did not do before?” “The same things.” “And what does it not do that it did before?” The developer paused for a long time. What Are We Really Asking? The […]
A developer declared a variable called temp and moved on. Six months later, another developer found it still there, holding something important. The senior developer was asked, “Should we rename it?” The senior replied, “What is more permanent than that which was meant to be temporary?” The Teaching Unfolds We have all written temp. We […]
The team spent months migrating to the newest framework. The old system was discarded. The senior developer asked, “What did the old framework teach you that the new one cannot?” And, “When you migrate code, what else travels with it?” The Teaching Unfolds Every few years, the software industry experiences a collective migration. React replaces […]
