Saying

Chesterton's Fence

Do not remove a fence until you understand why it was put there.

How to use it. Before deleting code that looks pointless, find out why it exists. Ask the person who wrote it. Read the commit message. Check the incident that caused it. Code that looks odd is often load-bearing.

How it gets misused. Used to refuse all change. Chesterton asks you to understand the fence first. Once you understand it, removing it is fine.

Principle Bounded Rationality People make decisions with incomplete information, limited time, and limited reasoning capacity. They satisfice rather than optimise.

Chesterton's Fence

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