Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot !
We’ve all been there, haven’t we? I’m talking of course, about idiot-proofing. This goes for having the word Diesel in big bold size 100 font stamped across your petrol cap to ensure you don’t pour anything but diesel into your diesel car. Or where you spend hours ensuring that your application can reverse an action, even ensuring that your app can handle that one buffoon out there who will click yes when asked “Are you really, really, really sure you want to delete absolutely everything – this is no going back after this !” You have sleepless nights pondering just how to ensure that 'one idiot user ' can’t manage to bring an entire trading system down by find a complete random set of keystrokes that a) you can’t predict or b) he can’t recall or reproduce. I’ve heard many times before – “Never underestimate the idiot because there is always an idiot out there who will prove you wrong!” This is one of the golden rules for any software developer. And then, just today at work, ...