If It Ain’t Broken...

Okay, so you can’t introduce bugs into your program if you don’t add or modify code, and that’s a major law of software design. However, there’s also a very important related rule that many software engineers have heard in one form or another, but sometimes forget:

It’s important to have evidence of problems before you address them. Otherwise, you might be developing features that don’t solve anybody’s problem, or you might be “fixing” things that aren’t broken.

If you fix problems without evidence, you’re probably going to break things. You’re introducing change into your system, which is going to bring new defects along with it. And not just that, but you’re wasting your time and adding complexity to your program for no reason.