Taking Shortcuts Consciously

In the preface of this book, I cursed the fact that we feel forced to take shortcuts all the time, building up a great heap of technical debt we never have the chance to pay back.

To prevent shortcuts, we must be able to identify them. So, the goal of this chapter is to raise awareness of some potential shortcuts and discuss their effects.

With this information, we can identify and fix accidental shortcuts. Or, if justified, we can even consciously opt-in to the effects of a shortcut.

Imagine the preceding sentence in a book about construction engineering or, even scarier, in a book about avionics. Most of us, however, are not building the software equivalent of a skyscraper or an airplane. And software is soft and can be changed more easily than hardware, so sometimes it's actually more economical to (consciously) take a shortcut first and fix it later (or never).

Why Shortcuts Are Like Broken Windows

In 1969, psychologist Philip Zimbardo...