The Boy ScoutsCác Hướng Đạo sinh have a rule: If you find a mess on the ground, you clean it up regardless of who might have made the mess. You intentionallymột cách chủ ý improve the environment for the next group of campers. Actually the original form of that rule, written by , the father of scoutinghướng đạo, was Làm cho thế giới trở nên tốt hơn lúc mà bạn đến với nó

What if we followed a similar rule in our code: No matter who the original author was, what if we always made some effort, no matter how small, to improve the module. What would be the result?

I think if we all followed that simple rule, we'd see the end of the relentless deteriorationtình trạng "bê tha" hóa =)) of our software systems. Instead, our systems would graduallydần dần get better and better as they evolvedscale up. We'd also see teams caring for the system as a whole, rather than just individualsmột cá nhân caring for their own small little part.

I don't think this rule is too much to askđúng rồi, thế này có gì là quá đáng đâu. You don't have to make every module perfect before you check it inpush code. You simply have to make it a little bit better than when you checked it outpull code. Of course, this means that any code you add to a module must be cleancode của mình phải sạch. It also means that you clean up at least one other thingrồi mới làm sạch thằng khác before you check the module back in. You might simply improve the name of one variableLOL..., or split one long function into two smaller functions. You might break a circular dependencya.child = b; b.child = a;, or add an interface to decouple policy from detailĐọc bài này.

Franklythực ra, this just sounds like common decencythói quen chung to me — like washing your hands after you use the restroom, or putting your trash in the bin instead of dropping it on the floorlol, bẩn thế. Indeed the act of leaving a mess in the code should be as socially unacceptablexã hội không chấp nhận as litteringđốt nhà. It should be something that just isn't done.

But it's more than that. Caring for our own code is one thing. Caring for the team's code is quite another. Teams help each other, and clean up after each othergọi là đùm bọc lẫn nhau nhé =)). They follow the Boy Scout rule because it's good for everyone, not just good for themselves.