The Bridge-Color Problem

http://www.flounder.com/bridge.htm

Here’s an interesting essay describing a particular type of problem we often run into when maintaing other people’s work. There are certain decisions about a project which must be made, but which are not directly related to the technology or design of the underlying archetecture.

While this fact is entirely unremarkable, what is interesting are then various artifacts introduced by the mantenance of these decisions. The gist of the essay (though unstated) is that it’s import to understand the reasoning behind these “bridge color” decisions if the project is going to be properly maintained.