For anyone following along in the NimblePros Software Craftsmanship Anti-patterns Calendar, June is the month of the Duct Tape Coder. The calendar is a great reminder to try to avoid all of these bad practices. You obviously want to avoid all of the bad practices illustrated in the calendar, but for the month of June, you should be focusing on not being a Duct Tape Coder.
Duct Tape Coding
Similar to Cowboy Coding, Duct Tape Coding is all about getting things done. Not worrying about how you do it or how it will be maintained in the future. The goal of the duct tape coder is to get something working.
You might be saying to yourself, “I thought that all of these agile good practices said to start with the simplest thing that works!”
You’re correct. It says to start there. That means that you need to clean things up and use refactoring to create a maintainable, clean solution. Consider the initial duct tape to be scaffolding to allow you to build the final, maintainable solution. The duct tape, along with some automated tests allows you to build a system to be proud of.
Spend June making sure that you’re building your software the right way. Don’t settle for a “working” solution. Build a good solution.
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