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Do the simplest thing that could possibly work

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1070 points dondraper36 | 2 comments | 29 Aug 25 19:05 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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hinkley ◴[29 Aug 25 19:55 UTC] No.45068652[source]▶
One of the biggest, evergreen arguments I’ve had in my career revolves around the definition of “works”.

“Just because it works doesn’t mean it isn’t broken.” Is an aphorism that seems to click for people who are also handy in the physical world but many software developers think doesn’t sound right. Every handyman has at some time used a busted tool to make a repair. They know they should get a new one, and many will make an excuse to do so at the next opportunity (hardware store trip, or sale). Maybe 8 out of ten.

In software it’s probably more like 1 out of ten who will do the equivalent effort.

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fuzzy2 ◴[29 Aug 25 20:24 UTC] No.45068978[source]▶
From somewhere around the net, I found this quote:

> It's not enough for a program to work – it has to work for the right reasons

I guess that’s basically the same statement, from a different angle.

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1. soperj ◴[29 Aug 25 20:36 UTC] No.45069111[source]▶
I remember once having to make a SOAP call that just wasn't connecting for some reason, but another end point on the same service was working, which made no sense. We tried calling the working endpoint right before calling the busted endpoint just for kicks, and that actually functioned. Still to this day makes no sense at all to me, we ended up moving off of soap eventually, but that code was in there until we did.
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2. hinkley ◴[29 Aug 25 20:41 UTC] No.45069157[source]▶
I hate the days when you are trying to fix a bug in a block of code and as you write pinning tests you realize that the code has always been broken and you cannot understand why it ever got the right answer. You’ve let the magic smoke out and you cannot put it back without fixing the problem. At some point you have to stop trying because you understand perfectly well how it should work and you need to move on to other things.