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Entropy — Why Code Rots And Technical Debt Grows
Developers are entropy machines
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Software is like entropy: It is difficult to grasp, weighs nothing, and obeys the Second Law of Thermodynamics; i.e., it always increases. Norman Augustine
Entropy is a way to measure disorder, uncertainty, and confusion. Entropy is the reason sand castles eventually dissolve back into the beach.
- It's why Ice cubes melt to become water
- Why we get older, not younger
- Why code and fruit rots
- Why a child's room become messy and never magically tidy
Developers need to put effort to control entropy, otherwise documentation is outdated, code rots and technical debt builds up.
Entropy explains why a code base turns into legacy code. Each fix, bug, extra line of code adds to the technical debt and slowly stretches the initial design.
If you don’t control entropy with a good development process then you get chaos. Chaos in software development leads to complexity, which leads to more chaos.