reesesWeb

I really enjoy when people start applying epidemiology to other areas of human behavior. My favorite, and the means by which I received this link, came from the Pragmatic Programming mailing list, in a conversation about "Broken Windows".

Broken Windows is the theory that a building can go for ages without apparent deterioration. It may show age, but it's still pleasant and inhabitable. Say that one day, some kid throws a rock through a window. You can fix the window right away, and the building is back to pleasant and inhabitable.

Or, on the other hand, say you don't fix that broken window. Some other kid sees the broken window, and decides to break a window of his own. In a shorter interval than the first, another kid comes by and breaks one of his own. Now, the previously pleasant building has three broken windows. Someone comes along with a can of spray paint and donates some graffiti. Now, the building is not pleasant at all. A door breaks, and no one fixes it. Homeless people come in and urinate in the corner of the lobby. What was pleasant a month before is now a noxious, uninhabitable, tenement, and it will take a huge effort to bring it back to pleasant.

It's the same way developing software. Say you review all code and write unit tests for all code. The ongoing overhead is not insignificant, but try doing it the other way. Oh, you have? And what happens when you hit QA? Yup, the same thing that happens to me, or anyone else.

Bugs. Bugs that you fix, and uncover, discover, or create more bugs. Then, you're staying up until 5am for a month to kill them all, and decide to release with bugs that you'd be embarrassed for your mother to know about. And you've done more work and gotten less sleep than if you had been disciplined in the first place.

While this is a lesson I know very, very well, enough to advocate in the face of the staunchest resistance, do I clean my home on a regular basis, or do I pay someone scads of money to scrub the heck out of every surface every couple weeks? Do I save a little money all the time, or try to bank large amounts at once because I need to cover an unexpected expense?

At least people at work think I'm disciplined. :-)

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