It's less a guideline for writing code than one I use when deciding where to spend my efforts with existing code. I've mostly worked in long-lived codebases of profitable software, so nearly everything is a strong candidate for refactoring off of "quality" alone.
When you find something real blood-curdling but the last commit in that file was three and a half years ago, you just close it and pretend you didn't see. Better to spend the effort somewhere it will definitely benefit someone soon, rather than maybe some day.
When you find something real blood-curdling but the last commit in that file was three and a half years ago, you just close it and pretend you didn't see. Better to spend the effort somewhere it will definitely benefit someone soon, rather than maybe some day.