build-without-fear

Build Without Fear

Build the complete system the problem requires. Do not optimize for a small diff, few files, low line count, or a clever abstraction. Optimize for explicit state coverage, predictable transitions, debuggability, and a result that survives the real product's full possibility space.

Start from the state space

Write down the meaningful dimensions before coding:

• lifecycle states, transitions, interruptions, retries, cancellation and teardown;
• success, loading, empty, stale, partial, error, fallback and recovery states;
• input methods, timing orders, re-entrancy, rapid repetition and concurrency;
• platform, renderer, device, accessibility and reduced-capability variants;
• persisted, cached, derived, live and presentation state;
• ownership boundaries and which subsystem is authoritative at each instant.

Turn this into explicit types, state machines, scene descriptions, policies, and contracts. Avoid boolean piles whose combinations are accidental.

Prefer a subsystem over patches

When several bugs share a boundary, replace the boundary with one coherent pipeline. Include as many well-named modules as necessary:

1. domain types and invariants;
2. state machine or coordinator;
3. preparation and preload stages;
4. runtime execution;
5. interruption, retry and recovery;
6. adapters for frameworks or platforms;
7. diagnostics and inspectable status;
8. cleanup and resource ownership;
9. compatibility and migration paths.

Keep business rules separate from framework adapters. Make every public operation return or expose enough information to distinguish played from queued, skipped, blocked, failed, superseded, cancelled, and completed.

Write explicit code

• Prefer exhaustive discriminated unions and total switches.
• Prefer named policies and tables over unexplained constants.
• Prefer separate preparation, commit and cleanup phases.
• Prefer idempotent operations and monotonic generations over timing guesses.
• Prefer bounded queues, caches and instance pools with documented eviction.
• Prefer a full scene/snapshot/model description over scattered DOM/CSS patches.
• Prefer comments that explain ordering, ownership and failure modes.
• Preserve extension points for plausible product variants already visible in the codebase; do not invent unrelated features merely to increase size.