Comments on: Workaround is a Four-Letter Word

By: Web design London

Web design London — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 21:37:00 +0000

I figure this is because we have a culture where learning and understanding how something works is something good, and bending that to your will through a 'clever hack'. web Design london

By: Chris Missal

Chris Missal — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 00:37:28 +0000

@Mark

There’s always “more pressing problems”. It does make business sense for your development team to understand the code though. Also, how many “pressing problems” are caused by the workarounds in the first place?

By: Mark Hoffman

Mark Hoffman — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 23:29:10 +0000

The word “workaround” gives you disgust? I understand your sentiment, particularly from a pure technical perspective, but there are times when it doesn’t make business sense to invest additional effort into something when there are more pressing problems to be solved.

By: Chris Missal

Chris Missal — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 13:14:18 +0000

@Keith
I too, would rather see hack than workaround. If it’s documented as a hack, it’s probably more likely to get fixed than something documented as a workaround.

@John
I’m not suggesting that a complete solution must be put in place immediately. I think fixing it for the next release is fine in many circumstances. What I have a problem with is providing a workaround that only gets the job done long enough until another workaround or “band-aid” is needed.

@Christopher
The problem with clever hacks is that I often see them as confusing for anybody but the hacker. Implementing a better solution or refactoring the code to use a design pattern allows the project to a lot more easily understood from other developers. I shouldn’t need somebody to explain their hack/workaround to me.

By: Christopher Rasch-Olsen Raa

Christopher Rasch-Olsen Raa — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 10:19:24 +0000

In the circles where I’ve been the past few years the word ‘hack’ is a very positively charged word. I figure this is because we have a culture where learning and understanding how something works is something good, and bending that to your will through a ‘clever hack’ (perhaps to do somethings it was not initially designed for) is a notable achievement.

The divide here is probably in what we put into the word, not the word itself. IMHO, a workaround is something that circumvents or bypasses some problem or restraint, whereas a hack can be any number of things. Creating new uses for something (a spring from an an old dishwasher given new life in something else), bypassing restraints, changing how an old radio outputs audio, are all examples of ‘hacks’, albeit not related to software development.

But this is how _I_ see these words. Joe down the block might have an entirely different take on what the words mean. For him ‘Stop’ might mean ‘Go’, or ‘Apple’ mean ‘Pain’ (since the last time he ate one he lost a tooth).

We’re all humans, and it will be impossible to find a definition that can be considered ‘universal’.

By: John Donoghue

John Donoghue — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 08:49:04 +0000

I don’t have a problem with a “workaround” so long as it is proceeded (either implicitly or explicitly) by the word “temporary” – and of course it really is temporary.

For instance, if a user raises a bug we will regularly respond with something like “Yes, that’s a bug and we’ll be fixing it in the next release. In the meantime here’s a temporary workaround so you can get on with what you’re doing.”

By: Keith Dahlby

Keith Dahlby — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 07:36:04 +0000

To me, a hack is preferable to a workaround. Hack at least implies some measure of cleverness, whereas workarounds suggest clumsiness.

Hacker > Workarounder