Comparison
Cargo cult programmingvsGolden hammer
Cargo cult programming
the annotation is on every class because it was on the first one, and nobody can say what it does.
Reproducing the form of something that worked without understanding the mechanism, so the ritual persists after the reason has gone. It is how configuration accumulates, how patterns get applied where they do not fit, and how a workaround for a bug fixed in 2019 stays in a template. The question that dissolves it is simply asking what would break if it were removed, and then trying it.
Full entry →Golden hammer
the answer was Kafka again, and the problem this time was a nightly report over four thousand rows.
Reaching for the tool you know rather than the tool that fits, because familiarity is doing the choosing. Everyone does it, and the tell is that the technology is picked before the requirements are stated. It is worth naming carefully in a review, because the counter-argument is often legitimate — a team that operates one technology well may genuinely be better off with an imperfect fit than with an unfamiliar tool nobody can debug at 3am.
Full entry →