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If you assume that any and every change could have a disastrous effect, would you rather have to deal with one change at a time or many changes at a time?
by LgWoodenBadger 7y ago
If you assume that any and every change could have a disastrous effect, would you rather have to deal with one change at a time or many changes at a time?
- zepto 7y agoI’d rather people not think that the risk is lowered because of the code size. It’s a red herring. Risk is lowered because the code is understood better not because the code is smaller. The assumption that each change carries an equal risk of disaster isn’t valid, because risk depends on your understanding of the changes and the codebase. Risk is equal only in the case where the developers know nothing about the change or the codebase. In this case, fire the VP of engineering or equivalent. Making changes as a series of small increments can just as easily lead to less understanding of the overall impact of the changes than a larger design process. Then you get a nice big failure from a small change. It looks like most of the changes were harmless when in fact they were all just building towards the one that caused the failure.