How easy is it for your programmers to fix problems?
A programmer, writing some new code, looks into some existing code that she needs to use. Something doesn’t look quite right. In fact, there’s a bug. Whether no one’s triggered it, or they have but their complaints haven’t reached anyone who will do something about it, is hard to say. Can she fix this code now and keep working? Or does something prevent that?
In such a situation, I would prefer to write a new test illustrating the bug, fix it, and check both the test and the fix into source control. This might take five minutes or an hour. It’s a small detour, but I feel better knowing that the code is now safer for the future.
Maybe, however, there are policies, either explicit or tacit, that prevent such quick resolution. Read More