02 September 2007
Broken Windows
One broken window, left unrepaired for any substantial length of time, instills in the inhabitants of the building a sense of abandonment- a sense that the powers that be don't care about the building. So another window gets broken. People start littering. Graffiti appears. Serious structural damage begins. In a relatively short space of time, the building becomes damaged beyond the owner's desire to fix it, and the sense of abandonment becomes reality.
Don't leave "broken windows" (bad designs, wrong decisions, or poor code) unrepaired. Fix each one as soon as it is discovered. If there is insufficient time to fix it properly, then board it up. Perhaps you can comment out the offending code, or display a "Not Implemented" message, or substitute dummy data instead. Take some action to prevent further damage and to show that you're on top of the situation.
This seems like wisdom to me and at this point in the project I need to focus on this implications of it. Before I start on adding the new features I need to deploy and iron all the creases out of the current version.
Labels: approach, guice, gwt, java
