Boring choices I keep making
Theo M. · Oct 12
Most of the trouble I see in production comes from boundary cases someone promised would never happen. The code is fine. The plan is fine. The promise is what ages badly.
I used to add a layer of abstraction the first time I saw a pattern repeat. Now I wait for the third. The waiting is uncomfortable, but the abstractions that survive that wait tend to last.
Latency budgets work better than latency targets. Targets are aspirational. Budgets force you to delete features when you go over.
I split a 4000-line file into 12 smaller ones this week. The smaller files weren't actually easier to understand. The 4000-line file was a problem of structure, not of length.
I write smaller commits than I used to. The commits are uglier in isolation and much easier to read in sequence.
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