If you’re involved in the process of writing code on any real level, you should be a reader of Coding Horror. It’s written by a guy named Jeff Atwood, and he’s definitely got something going on between his ears.
There’s a good post from a few days ago talking about “monkey patching” which brings up some good points. A lot of code gets modified in this way, and while it makes for some really clean code at times, I can understand a maintainer of a large system to freak out when they can’t find a piece of code that they know is running. It’s one of the reasons I don’t like Flash. It’s a great language, it’s even good for teaching people OO concepts. But code can be hidden anywhere, and given that a lot of Flash pieces are made by people who are designers first and coders second, they tend to get code stuffed away in obscure places. This makes modifying it killer.
Another example of a great article is the one right after the monkey patching — it’s about normalizing databases and performance issues. This is an article with direct real world implications. If you work with databases, this post is straightforward and simple truth.
Definitely get this blog in your RSS reader. I’ve got it.