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The flaws of incremental refinement should be obvious to anybody who's worked in a codebase more than 5 years old built on that approach. Maybe it could work in
by wry_discontent 7y ago
The flaws of incremental refinement should be obvious to anybody who's worked in a codebase more than 5 years old built on that approach. Maybe it could work in theory, but in practice, the iterations on crap produce more crap.
As far as a specific example, I remember a discussion with Uncle Bob where he specifically mentions banking and accounting as systems that shouldn't use that approach because you'll build the wrong thing.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoAnd yet the conventional wisdom is that "a complicated system that works is almost always found to have been derived from a simple system that works". But you're right, evolving code often turns it into a mess. The only way that doesn't is if, at each stage, the people working on it keep the architecture and code clean. That takes discipline, not just by the programmers, but also by management - they have to give the programmers time to do the cleanup that is needed, not just time to shoehorn something in.