This is interesting, because the mechanism of growing a comb-over applies to software development. A comb-over is the accumulation of years of deciding that today is not the day to change things. A comb-over is the result of years of procrastination, years of decisions that seem right when you’re in a hurry to get ready for work but in retrospect one of those days should have included a trip to the barber and a bold decision to accept your baldness or take some other action as you saw fit.
A comb-over is a local maximum for improving baldness. You can’t really escape baldness of your head. You can escape a local maximum in your software, if you’re thoughtful about managing tradeoffs between product progress and technical progress.
It would have been better if you hadn’t gone bald in the first place though. Same with software!
(Analogies are just great. Thanks for this one, Reginald.)
