{"id":2362,"date":"2015-09-22T19:50:50","date_gmt":"2015-09-22T07:50:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/?p=2362"},"modified":"2015-09-22T19:50:50","modified_gmt":"2015-09-22T07:50:50","slug":"break-it-or-improve-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/2362\/","title":{"rendered":"Break It or Improve It ?"},"content":{"rendered":"[Estimated Reading Time: <\/span> < 1<\/span> minutes]<\/span><\/span>

Seth Godin recently asserted that <\/p>\n

Don’t touch it! You might break it<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

is the opposite of <\/p>\n

Touch it! You can make it better<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

I fully appreciate what he means by this (and we mustn’t forget that Seth Godin does not blog on the subject of software development, although a lot of what he says often has relevance) but in the world of software application support I think there is a middle ground in this case.
\n<\/p>\n

Improve it only if you are sure<\/em><\/strong> you won’t break it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Estimated Reading Time: <\/span> < 1<\/span> minutes]<\/span><\/span> Seth Godin recently asserted that Don’t touch it! You might break it is the opposite of Touch it! You can make it better I fully appreciate what he means by this (and we mustn’t forget that Seth Godin does not blog on the subject of software development, although a lot of what he says often […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[4,1,48],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1TKYv-C6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":615,"url":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/615\/","url_meta":{"origin":2362,"position":0},"title":"Wringing Yet More Speed from MIDAS.DLL","date":"12 Nov 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Cameron Hart at Flow Software has just blogged about a change he identified in MIDAS.DLL to significantly improve the performance (and capacity) of client data sets when handling large volumes of records and BLOB fields. \u00a0Basically he seems to have taken the work previously done by Andreas Hausladen and applied\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Delphi"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":202,"url":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/202\/","url_meta":{"origin":2362,"position":1},"title":"Photo Of The Week","date":"18 Aug 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"","rel":"","context":"In "Photo of the Week"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":282,"url":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/282\/","url_meta":{"origin":2362,"position":2},"title":"Class Helpers – Ruling from the Appellate Court","date":"01 Sep 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"My previous post on class helpers provoked a passionate response from some quarters who believed that they could be used \"safely\".\u00a0 More worrying was an apparent belief that their use was actually endorsed by CodeGear - tacitly or otherwise.\u00a0 A rather odd view given the advice from CodeGear themselves is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Delphi"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":557,"url":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/557\/","url_meta":{"origin":2362,"position":3},"title":"The Economics of “Free”","date":"25 Sep 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been staggered at the response to my recent post calling for a \"Community Edition\" (and a \"Standard Edition\") of Delphi. \u00a0Even more staggering though was that some people still don't \"get it\", thinking that a free or cut-price version of Delphi will somehow be the financial ruin of Embarcadero.They\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Delphi"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":683,"url":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/683\/","url_meta":{"origin":2362,"position":4},"title":"Class Helpers: Extending Classes for Context","date":"21 Nov 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"NEWSFLASH: I believe I have found a use for class helpers in the wild! This, even though I have long held the view that class helpers should not be viewed as a general purpose utility. They were designed for a very specific purpose and the authors of the technology themselves\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Delphi"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":860,"url":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/posts\/860\/","url_meta":{"origin":2362,"position":5},"title":"Charles Petzold Rides Again (+ praise for Kindle and O’Reilly)","date":"18 May 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Like many I suspect, Charles Petzold's \"Programming Windows\" was one of the most important books on my shelves for a long time, and it has been a long time since it was updated. With the advent of .NET many perhaps thought a new edition would never come (or indeed be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Delphi"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2362"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2362"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2365,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2362\/revisions\/2365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltics.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}