If you want your software to be flexible, you have to flex it! The only way to prove that your software is easy to change is to make easy changes to it. And when you find that the changes aren’t as easy as you thought, you refine the design so that the next change is easier. When do you make these easy changes? All the time! Every time you look at a module you make small, lightweight changes to it to improve its structure. Every time you read through the code you adjust the structure. This philosophy is sometimes called merciless refactoring. I call it “the Boy Scout rule”: Always check in a
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