Logical fallacies in software engineering

Logical fallacies in software engineering
artur-martsinkovskyi.github.io

Off-by-one error ;-)

Some I have noticed as a JavaScript developer:

* Appeal to Popularity, a modification of appeal to authority. Essentially this says if a tool or approach is popular it is correct. The common assertion is that popular approaches must be correct as many eyes would have found and reported any problems. This fallacy also explains why horrendous highly visible bugs can present in exceedingly popular applications for long periods of time, because developers simply believe the strength and wisdom of the community are enough to identify, report, and resolve any issue in a timely manner. Software isn't magic and isn't magically updated or repaired because its popular.

* Invented Here. This is the opposite of the more well known Not Invented Here, which asserts that developers are irrationally afraid to write original code. The common assertion is that any original code whether from you or your coworkers is a horrid mistake, because somebody else has done it better. The common defense is that developers are standing on the shoulders of giants.

* Toolsmith Fallacy. This is an extension of the above mentioned invented here fallacy in that use of tools is good and the use of more tools is likely better. This line of thinking is how we end up with stupidity like left-pad and how a simple 30 line tool could have hundreds of dependencies whose total weight exceeds hundreds of megabytes. This fallacy is also dangerous when it asserts that dependencies don't need to be tested since the assumption is that they are better than original code.

* Student Fallacy. This asserts that the approach first learned is most correct. This fallacy is used as a bias against differing ways to solve a problem so that a developer can maintain confidence and save face when criticized or encounters something they don't understand.

* Big Fallacy. This asserts that when something becomes large or poorly understood it should be dismissed out of hand. This is essentially a bias against reading code, which is the required first step before refactoring any given approach into something more comprehensible. This fallacy completely ignores that fact that a given artifact may do the job perfectly well with great performance.

* Framework Fallacy. This fallacy is an extension of the toolsmith fallacy and basically says a given approach cannot be achieved without a given tool if there is a tool that claims to address the problem.

* Assembly Fallacy. I have not seen this one in a while, but when jQuery was really popular any attempt to write code without use of jQuery was immediately compared to writing assembly.

* DOM is slow. Most people making this claim don't really seem to know what the DOM is. Here is the DOM that modern web browsers use: https://dom.spec.whatwg.org/ This one is highly technical and makes many people sad, so I won't go into this here.

* Open Source is a My Personal Gift. This fallacy asserts that free software is a gift provided for you. Open source software, like any software, takes effort of a person writing software. If you want a new feature submit a pull request. It is astonishing to see the hostility that arises when this is mentioned.