First of all, sorry for not writing to you yesterday. I spent the day in the hospital with my wife. Our second daughter was born on 1:20pm yesterday and we couldn’t be happier. Mother and daughter are both very well. This is the reason why I won’t be able to continue writing my usual emails for the next few days. But I will continue sending you emails. The content will be mostly “written” by other people though. 😉

Today I want to share a recent article by Uncle Bob: Too Clean?

According to Mei, in order to be “livable”, the organization of a software system should lie somewhere between the extremes of the horrific tangled mess of code hoarders, and the antiseptic cleanliness seen in the pages of interior decorating magazines and home sales brochures.

This is not something I had considered or expressed before; though it has always been something I’ve sheepishly practiced.

Can a system be too clean? Is it possible to focus so much on cleanliness that no one can practically work in the system?

In this article Robert references a talk by Sarah Mei that he saw and shares his point of view. Have a read.

Yours, Holger