First make the change easy, then make the easy change (2021)
&gt; In a way, this quote is saying “first do what you should have always been doing; being organized” and “then do what you came here to do in the first place (add a feature, fix a bug).”<p>This is half the meaning of the quote, but only half.<p>Even if you&#x27;ve been as organized as can be, business requirements change and suddenly your code organization is <i>wrong</i>. A good codebase can turn bad fast when people try to retain their original code model in the face of a changing real-world model. Changes become harder and harder, the code becomes more and more complicated, and you end up with a big ball of mud.<p>I suspect this is especially likely to happen when the original architects of the system are long gone. They knew <i>why</i> the system was structured the way it was and would have been able to recognize when the requirements evolved to the point where that design stopped making sense. But subsequent maintainers don&#x27;t have that picture and either are afraid to make large structural changes or they don&#x27;t know where the inflection points are that allow adaptation.