Saturday 3 January 2009

Accidential Complexity

It sounds wrong but actually it seems to be true. Small mistakes in basic things in a system can turn out to be the biggest mistakes. Over time it get harder and harder to correct them ...

Think about insufficiently defined data types (e.g. times without considering time zones) which are then used over and over again. Some people may spot the problem and fix it somewhere but usually not at the root. Changing and correcting such issues becomes more and more difficult over time. The worst is that these things go often wrong as they are considered to be trivial and not worth too much effort.

Avoid such accidential complexity by spending enough time and brain to do the small things right. It saves you a lot of time in the future.

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