So last week HN said "hey, go read The Pragmatic Programmer if you havent", and, I finished chapter one up a night or two ago. It said, paraphrasing, "A single

So last week HN said "hey, go read The Pragmatic Programmer if you havent", and, I finished chapter one up a night or two ago. It said, paraphrasing, "A single broken window in a neighborhood is often the catalyst that begins the transition from a nice neighborhood into a bad neighborhood. Everyone starts looking at that busted window and figuring everything's busted. Everyone starts to treat everything like it's busted and that's that, it's ruined". Ok, heavily paraphased. Putting a little notice up, "Hey, we see this! And we know it's gotta get fixed, so here's a plastic sign with a recent date on it so you know we're around and working on it" is better than just leaving the mess. And an "under construction" sign on a website is meant to be this treatment. I think the book is old enough that we hadn't invented the default-cynic who would immediately look for a 22 year old timestamp on the construction.gif and invalidate the entire concept with counterexample. I believe the concept is sound, even if in practice it's often abused.