The Boy Scouts have a rule: leave the camp cleaner than you found it. This does not mean that all the trash has to be cleaned up now, but you can’t let it get worse, and it must get at least a little better. In Bob Martin’s book, Clean Code, he asks, “What if code got a little better every time you change it?” I’ll answer it: the industry would not find itself in the mess it’s in. The industry norm is for code to incrementally worsen with each change.
Much of the time, following the Boy Scout Rule won’t be hard. It’s an incremental strategy. It’s easy to start and easy to sustain. Here are some typical challenges and ideas on how to be a Boy Scout.
