Comparison
Cargo cult programmingvsInner-platform effect
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 →Inner-platform effect
the configuration grew conditionals and loops, and you realised you had written a programming language, badly.
Building a system so configurable that it reimplements the platform it runs on, only worse and without its tooling. The classic instances are a database inside a database — key-value tables with a type column — and a rules engine that grows control flow. The tell is that changing behaviour requires editing data rather than code, and that debugging it has no debugger.
Full entry →