Software Dental Care

Why should you ever brush your teeth when you can just wait to go to the dentist and have them clean them for you every six months? Because eventually your mouth begins to smell, and it becomes noticeable. This is what happens when we don’t continuously improve our development practices, architecture, and processes. Like our teeth, software begins to rot. Ridden with smells, our mouth (code) begins to stink (become difficult to maintain). Eventually teeth (projects) need to be pulled and replaced (scrapped and rewritten).

“person wearing silver-colored ring while holding denture” by Peter Kasprzyk on Unsplash

Please be sure to brush your teeth every day. Refactor your code until it is readable. Test your code manually and through automated tests until you know for a fact that what you wrote works, and works well. Follow best practices such as applying useful design patterns, and always be on the lookout for improvement. Learn about technical debt and ways to avoid it and pay it off. Be an active member in the society of best practices in software maintenance. These are our acts of brushing, flossing and using mouthwash. It will pay off to maintain clean teeth.

Software Dental Care was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.