So, I heard about this thing, this approach people were calling the ‘Scott Furlong’ way, I think. Can’t even remember where I picked it up, maybe some old forum thread or a chat with a guy I used to work with. Sounded kinda out there, but I was dealing with this big messy project at the time, you know? The kind where nobody knows what anything does anymore. So I thought, okay, let’s give this ‘Scott Furlong’ idea a try. What’s the worst that could happen?
The core idea, as I understood it anyway, was about making things ridiculously simple. Like, almost aggressively simple. Forget fancy patterns, forget layers upon layers. Just get the job done, make the code do what it says on the tin. So, I picked a small part of the system, something I had to rewrite anyway.
Getting Started
First thing I did was just map out the absolute basic steps. No flowcharts, no diagrams, just a plain list. Like:
- Get the data from this place.
- Check this one condition.
- If okay, save it here.
- If not okay, log an error there.
Super basic. Then I started coding it. And I really tried to stick to that ‘Scott Furlong’ simplicity. No clever tricks, no one-liners that take five minutes to understand. Just straightforward code. If a variable needed a long name to be clear, I gave it a long name. If a function did two things, I split it into two functions.
The Grind and The Problems
Honestly, it felt slow at first. Like I was writing baby code. And explaining it to others was… interesting. My team lead looked at it and was like, “This works, but… isn’t it a bit too simple? Aren’t you missing edge cases?” And sometimes, yeah, maybe I was. Trying to keep it so simple meant sometimes I didn’t think about the weirder stuff that could happen.
Plus, integrating it back into the main mess was tough. My simple bit had to talk to the complicated bits, and that interface got messy real fast. It wasn’t a magic fix for the whole system, that’s for sure. It was like building a neat little LEGO house and then trying to connect it to a pile of rusty scrap metal. Didn’t quite fit.
So, What Happened?
In the end, that specific piece of code I rewrote? It actually held up pretty well. Because it was so simple, new folks could understand it quickly. When bugs did pop up, they were usually easy to spot because there weren’t many places to hide.
Did I start applying the ‘Scott Furlong’ thing everywhere? Nah. It doesn’t work for everything. Some problems are just complex, and trying to force simplicity on them just makes a different kind of mess. But it did change how I approach things now. Before I jump into some complex pattern, I ask myself – can I do this the ‘Scott Furlong’ way? Can this be simpler? Often, the answer is yes, or at least, simpler than I first thought.
It wasn’t some revolution, just a small shift in thinking. Came about because I was just so fed up with that tangled old system. Sometimes you gotta try something weird just to break out of a rut, you know?
