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I've dedicated entire years over my multi-decade career prepping software for changes that never happen. Not once has a big change been correctly prepped for ahead of time.

So my teams don't waste time on it any more.

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In my experience the best way to prepare for changes is to write dumb code.

Dumb code, easily revertible has been, by far, the most effective way to prepare for changes in my experience.

Anything trying to be too smart, too generalised, too decoupled with plugable parts and it has a huge potential to become an entangled mess. While dumb code can be read and reasoned about quickly, if a change is easily revertible you can plug back the dumb code and try again without losing momentum.

> too decoupled with plugable parts

Decoupling is good.

But if you build a plugin system now you have many more problems.

Decoupling and composition are absolutely powerful tools to make good code but unfortunately I've seen both being used to create ad hoc plugin systems that were simply absurd to deal with in microservices.

"I've invested in individual stocks and never made double significant returns. Therefore I no longer invest in individual stocks."

Totally fair. It is a skill in and of itself.

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