antipattern

The Fast Beats Right antipattern alleges that it is always better to just get something done, regardless of quality, than to invest any effort into doing the job right.  In software development, this quickly leads to taking on Technical Debt, … Continued

Waterfall, or Waterfail, is a rigid software development life cycle methodology that moves all activity through a series of stages, such as Gather Requirements, Design, Develop, Test, Deliver, Maintain.  The first article describing this model (Managing the Development of Large … Continued

The practice of showing a customer “smoke and mirrors” and then hoping the engineers or developers can build it has been around for as long as sales and marketing people have had jobs.  As long as what’s being sold can … Continued

Many software products die an earlier death than necessary because of feature creep, by which additional bits of functionality are continually added.  Feature creep (also commonly known as scope creep) is often responsible for delays in shipping or delivering software, … Continued

Frankencode refers to code that was never designed to work together, being pulled into a single application and held together with duct tape, baling wire, and maybe some Adapter design pattern usage. While software reuse and composability are desirable, frequently … Continued

The Duct Tape Coder is someone who is able to cobble together software that solves the immediate problem, but without any concern for the code’s quality or maintainability.  Sometimes, a bit of duct tape is exactly what the situation calls … Continued

The Blob is an anti-pattern that describes a class which resembles the monster from the 1958 film The Blob, which absorbs anything it touches and grows larger and larger over time. Such classes are similar to God Objects and over … Continued

When software is released before it is ready, and users of the software are made to find all of its bugs and shortcomings, they’re made to feel as though they’re walking in a minefield. It’s important to release software as … Continued

It’s common for software developers and some organizations to prefer to write something they may need for a given project themselves, rather than using an available open source or commercial offering.  Generally, it’s best to avoid this urge unless the … Continued