We’ll fix it later

(written by Lawrence Krubner, however indented passages are often quotes)

Three big lies we tell ourselves? Michael Blake writes:

#2 We’ll fix it later

No you won’t.

We both know you won’t.

This is a lie we tell ourselves, or that we’re told, to try and pretend we’re not taking shortcuts. Every now and then something will come up that forces you to fix it later, but most the time it will stay broken, and other people will have to keep working around your broken code and rushed ideas.

Accept this simple statement: “It is not worth doing right”.

That’s what you mean when you say we’ll fix it later. You mean the cost of doing it right now just isn’t worth it from whatever measurements you’ve put together. That’s okay! Just be honest about it.

#3 It’s a temporary solution

Another big lie we tell ourselves. Temporary solutions have a nasty way of becoming permanently entrenched solutions.

As an example I knew a web developer who, as a temporary solution, spun up a simple asp.net page for saving some string data.

I half agree with these. I do agree that a given decision tends to develop its momentum, and that we often underestimate the true cost of spending time on one thing, rather than another. “I’ll embed some PHP into this static HTML file and then next month we’ll rebuild the whole site as a clean Rails site” — but chances have now increased that the whole site will be built with PHP. We don’t always get the chance to reverse our decisions. And sometimes that sucks. But a lot of times, we don’t reverse our decisions because there is no need to. I’ve seen a lot of moments where the half-broken but “good enough” solution was the only one that was needed.