[theptip]

It’s a good idea inasmuch as the ideas you encounter have thought behind them more often than people think. In a local environment with thoughtless decisions, sure, don’t apply that heuristic. I think in general most people under-invest in understanding why the “fence” is there, and so I disagree that it’s a bad heuristic.

I also disagree with the specific claim that software bloat is due to repeated application of Chesterton’s fence; I think bloat is caused by a lack of thought about what is needed and laziness around pruning dead code, rather than thinking about justifications for past decisions and then deferring to them.