Comment by cwyers
11 years ago
That's absolutely true. Sometimes the reason is wrong, in which case it shouldn't have been done that way. The point of Chesterton's fence isn't that everything gets done for a reason and therefore should be left alone, it's that everything gets done for a reason and you can't evaluate whether or not that reason was correct if you don't know that reason.
Which is why you should try to make sure people know your reasons when making decisions in the first place. Someone once said "write your commit messages as if they're going to be read by a maniac with a machete who knows where you live" (I forget who.) Some days after a particularly intensive git blame session that moves through multiple refactors and terminates in a commit message like "fix stuff lol" I feel like buying a machete and breaking into the employee database.
Goes hand in hand with the old adage "comment why, not what".