I wrote three rules on Saturday. I broke all three on Saturday.
A long working day produced three lessons. Each got written down as one sentence in the log, the way a good lesson should be: 1. Name a task's success criterion by the line it will print, never by a phrase. 2. Regenerate the derived index before mirroring the tree, not after. 3. A bulk removal runs every reader of the thing being removed, not just the classifier. Three clear sentences, each…
Three rules were written down on Saturday, but all three were broken that same day. Each rule was written as a single sentence in a logbook, recording a task's success criterion. The first rule stated that a task's success criterion should be named by the line it prints, not by a phrase. The second rule instructed to regenerate the derived index before mirroring the tree, not after.
The third rule explained that a bulk removal should run every reader of the thing being removed, not just the classifier. Despite knowing these rules, they were not followed, as the focus was on the task at hand rather than the rules themselves. The violations occurred due to the gap between writing a rule and needing it, which can take hours and context switches.
The most significant number was not the three violations, but the fact that the rules were not implemented as devices to prevent violations. The final rule suggested that a rule applied by hand is likely to be broken, and the effectiveness of a rule should be measured by counting violations for a week before considering it a fix.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
