You are 100% accountable for your source code

You are 100% accountable for your source code: "It is just amazing how the mainstream software development industry is behind the times in comparison to other more advanced disciplines; the below fragment by Mary Poppendieck summarizes what I am writing about."

Caught this through the feed of MSDN blogs and it hits a good point. Specifically, every line counts and every line is one more line of source you need to keep correct in relation to every change made anywhere else in the code. Now, this has some other points to consider, such as private constructs being a little less dependant on other code, but on the whole it is a pretty true and simple statement. Keep your source code lean, and don't add what you don't need, because every line you write is another line you need to worry about when you make any change anywhere. Of course, this is well known in most senses, and nearly all techniques of intelligent code design revolves around keeping all these increasing lines under control and protected from one another. However, no matter how good we think we can deal with it, we can never forget the simplest way to keep the code correct: less code.

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