3 posts tagged with "best-practice"

In the high-pressure environment of modern software delivery, there is a phrase that carries more weight than any architectural diagram or complex algorithm. It is whispered in late-night Slack channels, suggested during tense sprint reviews, and voiced in the final hours before a major release.

“Can we just do it this way, just this once?”

On the surface, it sounds like the height of pragmatism. It’s a temporary bypass, a minor detour from the “ideal” path to meet a very real business need. But in the world of engineering, "just this once" is the most dangerous phrase in our vocabulary. It is the first crack in the dam, the initial concession that begins the slow, silent transition from a culture of excellence to a culture of "good enough."

The Most Dangerous Phrase in Engineering​

Few phrases sound as harmless and prove as destructive as “just this once.”

It usually appears under pressure. A deadline is close. A release window is narrowing. A customer escalation is loud. In that moment, the phrase feels pragmatic, even responsible. After all, the intent is not recklessness; it is delivery. The compromise feels contained, temporary, and reversible.

And that is precisely why it is dangerous.

In the high-stakes world of software engineering, architectural design, and organizational leadership, there is perhaps no phrase more polarizing than “it depends.”

To a junior developer looking for a roadmap, it sounds like an evasion. To a project manager staring at a looming deadline, it sounds like a delay tactic. To a stakeholder looking for a "yes" or "no," it sounds like a lack of conviction. We live in a culture that fetishizes certainty. We reward the person who stands up in the meeting and points decisively toward a single technology stack, a single methodology, or a single timeline.

Yet, as systems grow in complexity, the most dangerous person in the room is often the one who is 100% certain. This article explores why the phrase “it depends” is not a sign of a wavering mind, but rather the hallmark of a seasoned expert who understands that in the real world, there are no solutions — only trade-offs.

The Answer Everyone Distrusts​

When a stakeholder asks, "Should we migrate to microservices?" and the principal architect responds with "It depends," a palpable tension often enters the room. This friction stems from a fundamental disconnect between how we perceive intelligence and how complexity actually functions.

In engineering culture, cleverness is often a badge of honour. Engineers chase the thrill of clever code. We celebrate the engineer who solves a complex problem in a single, ingenious line of code. It feels like a mic-drop moment. Code reviews shower praise on "elegant" solutions that compress logic into minimal lines. Pull requests get merged faster when they are deemed "smart".

Cleverness is seductive because it feels like mastery. It signals intelligence, speed, and confidence. In fast-moving teams, clever solutions are often rewarded implicitly: they reduce apparent effort, demonstrate technical prowess, and give the impression of efficiency.

Yet, months, or sometimes weeks later, that same code becomes a liability. Engineers hesitate before touching it. Changes take longer than expected. Bugs surface in edge cases no one fully understands anymore. What was once praised becomes quietly avoided. Clever code feels like a shortcut to productivity today, but it accelerates technical debt tomorrow. Why is it celebrated early and regretted later? Because cleverness prioritizes the author's immediate brilliance over the team's long-term sustainability. What starts as a productivity high turn into a maintenance nightmare, eroding team velocity over time.

What “Clever” Really Means in Code​

Before we lambast "cleverness," it is crucial to define what we mean. We are not talking about elegant design, efficient algorithms, or thoughtful abstractions – these are hallmarks of good engineering. Instead, "clever" in this context refers to code that prioritizes conciseness or intellectual gymnastics over clarity and readability.

At its core, "clever" code manifests in a few key ways: