Tag: myths and misconceptions
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Countering the Damage of Well-intentioned Misinformation
Following are some thoughts I recently had about cargo cult and Brandolini’s Law in software development. Brandolini’s Law says that the energy required to fight misinformation (or “bullshit”) is way higher than the energy required for spreading the misinformation in the first place. Cargo cult is the phenomenon where people…
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The Myth of the Inverted Test Pyramid
Every time I see someone advocating for inverting the test pyramid, or testing everything with slower, more flaky higher level tests, it’s well intended but unfortunately based on wrong assumptions. It’s a perfect example of Brandolini’s Law: People end up with the test ice cream cone all by themselves and…
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Git Myth: “git fetch just downloads meta-data”
This is a misconception that I’ve seen or heard many times, sometimes almost in those exact words. Reality: `git fetch` downloads the actual commits from the remote repository. That’s the actual code versions, available locally. When you fetch, all commits from the remote branches are copied to your local repo,…
Raimund Krämer 