I’m at Bath Ruby 2015, live blogging some of the talks
Photo by @Naomi_Freeman
- Some bugs are admirable. Squashing them makes you feel victorious
- Squashing the bug isn’t enough: if you don’t clear up the root issues, it will just cause you future pain - cleaning up the mess.
- Fundamental attribution error: assume that bad code means a bad person/unskilled developer (other people), or assume that they were having a bad day (our friends)
- Prisoner’s dilemna as a metaphor for the choice of whether to follow good
practices
- The rational choice is to always ‘defect’ - but everyone loses.
- The way to maximise the overall result for people is for everyone to cooperate (add tests, improve error handling, extract responsibilities)
- only works if everyone is on board: one person ‘defecting’ will mess it up for everyone
- Every commit we make tips the balance in one direction or the other: towards entropy or order