Skip to Content
Understanding Software
book

Understanding Software

by Max Kanat-Alexander
September 2017
Beginner
278 pages
4h 24m
English
Packt Publishing
Audiobook available
Content preview from Understanding Software

Chapter 16. Make It Never Come Back

When solving a problem in a codebase, you're not done when the symptoms stop. You're done when the problem has disappeared and will never come back.

It's very easy to stop solving a problem when it no longer has any visible symptoms. You've fixed the bug, nobody is complaining, and there seem to be other pressing issues. So why continue to do work on it? It's fine for now, right? No.

Remember that what we care about the most in software is the future.

The way that software companies get into unmanageable situations with their codebases is not really handling problems until they are done.

This also explains why some organizations cannot get their tangled codebase back into a good state. They see one problem in the ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Righting Software

Righting Software

Juval Lowy
Fundamentals of Software Engineering

Fundamentals of Software Engineering

Nathaniel Schutta, Dan Vega
Building Software

Building Software

Nikhilesh Krishnamurthy, Amitabh Saran

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781788628815