Brent Simmons, Reason Number 33,483 to Hate Programming:

Or I could have the superclass expose the appIsTerminating property in its header file, so that the subclass could see it. This also sucks, because a controller class has no business exposing its own copy of global application state.

In the end, though, that’s what I did. (Along with a comment that the property was there for subclasses.)

It reminds me that there are two competing values:

  1. Do everything the right way every time.

  2. Make responsible and professional decisions about time and expenses and benefits and drawbacks.

My nature is to take path #1. It is so hard for me to take path #2. I have the utmost respect who can work on sprawling, modern software and stay on path #2. But path #1, always pulling me in and sending me down rabbit holes.

Sometimes I wonder which of these paths got me to where I am in my career. Others, I wonder if I think I’m a everything-the-right-way person but really I’m a responsible-and-professional-tradeoffs person.

A brain’s a weird place to live.