Is your shop 20+ developers? Monkey patching isn't dangerous in and of itself, to my mind, but the prospect of code-surprises is ever present. When I read code,

Is your shop 20+ developers? Monkey patching isn't dangerous in and of itself, to my mind, but the prospect of code-surprises is ever present. When I read code, I may not realize it has been overwritten elsewhere. I'm not sure at what number of hires that guy makes his way into the group, but debugging becomes an increasing part of development costs.