5: Don't try to retrofit quality
What? No! DO TRY! I mean... Do or do not, there is no try... But YES - Retrofit quality into the legacy code.
OK... now I'll move past the principle into the blurb...
"Quality cannot be retrofit into software" ... SIGH... just... fucking... SIGH
Yes. It. Can. It's called refactoring. Was this not a thing in 1995? Did people not make changes to code in 1995? Did we only have write once source code? What the ever loving fuck...
There's an off hand of 'this is why (Principle 11)'.... which yeah; don't prototype into production. We'll get there.
What fucking evidence is there that we can't retrofit quality; which calls out the -ilities. We fucking CAN retrofit that.
Just... What?
This is so fundementally wrong; and a common view. "Legacy code is hard to work in"... yeah, when it's shit that you don't refactor. When you focus so much on productivity you never try to improve quality... because quality costs way too much...
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!!!
Focus on quality. ESPECIALLY if the system you're going to be working in doesn't have it. Get. Quality. In. DO IT!
Really disappointed in this book now. If this wasn't cheap blog fodder, I'd stop.