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Comment by adrianN | Hacker News Reader

This seems like trivial advice that has very little impact on day to day programming. "Just try to think of all the possibilities and you'll have fewer bugs."

It would be more useful to have a reference of quality techniques that have at least some data behind their claims of efficiency. I know of this list:

http://pastebin.com/xZ6m4T8Z

I would prefer something with more citations. Does anybody have something like that?

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I think she's trying to imply that we should not jump into coding without putting in some thought on all possible scenarios. Obviously there is no way that anyone can tabulate all possible scenarios, but the time spent on dwelling on possibilities helps to avoid initial flurry of bugs after a feature is deployed.

Yeah, but it's easier to think tweet-sized thoughts.

So, does that demean it? A thought is just a seed, and the onus of growing/nurturing it is on the thinker.

Yeah, and it sounds exactly like something a non-technical manager might say to "help" their workers.

Well you can choose to ignore what a non-technical manager says (if you don't care for him/her).

I don't know what your programming experience is, but if you've done some moderately complex projects this might sound obvious but is overlooked by a lot of people.

Source: Personal experience which lead to a lot of sleepless nights

It's like they say: Good programmers look both ways before crossing a one-way street.

"Just try to think of all the possibilities" is excellent advice. I got told that when I was a younger programmer. Now I live by it. I agree that it's not an easily actionable kind of advice, but probably in any field some of the best advice is not easy to understand or put into practice.

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