A couple of days ago, I was having a coffee with one of my colleague and he told me that:

“Almost every time we’re asked to develop a new feature, we provide our project leader with 3 ways of doing it: the quick & dirty way, the way we’d do it if we’d have the time to and, finally, the one in the middle: the way that allows us to meet the deadline doing something acceptable. Most of the time the later is chosen.”

Even if he told me that he was not so happy with it, he also said that it’s how it is and that they did not have the choice if they wanted to meet the deadline :-(

This plague has a name: the good enough software.

Kevlin Henney has a nice definition for this, here it is:

The good enough in good enough software refers to intrinsic quality: defect management, code quality and performance are not prioritized or managed as critical qualities. Deadlines end up being the focus, starting with initial time to market. While such an approach can appear to pay benefits in the short term, such an approach makes little economic sense in the long run — accidental costs and delays arising from quality issues come to define the development rather than features. (from InfoQ)

As a developer you should not provide 3 different ways of doing things. You should not jeopardize your projects by lowering the level of quality you’d like to put into. It’s up to your project leader/manager to strive to reduce the number of functionalities instead, it’s part of their job and this is where negociation is encouraged! As a developer you should always focus on defect management, performance and craftsmanship the same way.

This is why worse is better.

Worse is better has been coined by Richard Gabriel and as stated on Wikipedia:

The idea is that quality does not necessarily increase with functionality. There is a point where less functionality (“worse”) is a preferable option (“better”) in terms of practicality and usability. Software that is limited, but simple to use, may be more appealing to the user and market than the reverse.

If you do care about this, and I know you do, but your management don’t, well, quit your job :-)

And while you’ll be doing job interviews, please ask people you’re gonna meet this simple question: Is code quality taken as a corporate asset? You’ll know if it’s worth applying for a job there!