Voyageurs

I've been reading The Revenant by Michael Punke and came across the following few passages. The main character, Hugh Glass, is embarking on a canoe trip up the Missouri River with a group of French Canadian fur traders known as voyageurs.

...For the rest of their voyage, Glass manned not a paddle but an enormous sponge, constantly bailing water as it pooled on the bottom of the canoe.

It was a full-time job, since the bâtard leaked steadily. The canoe reminded Glass of a floating quilt. Its patchwork skin of birch bark was sewn together with wattope, the fine root of a pine tree. The seams were sealed with pine tar, reapplied constantly as leaks appeared. As birch had become more difficult to find, the voyageurs were forced to use other materials in their patching and plugging. Rawhide had been employed in several spots, stitched on and then slathered in gum. Glass was amazed at the fragility of the craft. A stiff kick would easily puncture the skin, and one of La Vierge's main tasks as steersman was the avoidance of lethal, floating debris. At least they benefited from the relatively docile flow of the fall season. The spring floods could send entire trees crashing downstream.

If you've ever maintained a large code base, you probably already see where I'm going with this. The constant patching and plugging of leaks, the fragility of the craft, one man constantly bailing out water while several others row the boat guided by a steersman. These elements all remind me of several large software projects I've been on.  The passage continues.

There was an upside to the bâtard's shortcomings. If the vessel was frail, it was also light, an important consideration as they labored against the current. Glass came quickly to understand the odd affection of voyageurs for their craft. It was a marriage of sorts, a partnership between the men who propelled the boat and the boat that propelled the men. Each relied upon the other. The voyageurs spent half their time complaining bitterly about the manifold ails of the craft, and half their time nursing them tenderly.

This reminds me not only of the relationship programmers have with our code, but also of the relationship we have with our tools. How much time do we spend complaining about an IDE or a framework? How much time configuring them? But after we've gotten comfortable using them, most of us will strongly resist switching to a new one. Finally...

They took great pride in the appearance of the bâtard, dressing it in jaunty plumes and bright paint. On the high prow they had painted a stag's head, its antlers tilted challengingly toward the flowing water. (On the stern, La Vierge had painted the animal's ass.)

This final bit surprises me the most, but in a way I suppose it shouldn't. I don't know much about boating, but I do know that you should fix the leaks in your boat before you bother to decorate it. But that isn't how we always approach software development, is it? I've seen people spend plenty of time refactoring and cleaning code that didn't really need to change, or adding test cases just to get a higher percentage in test coverage. At times I've been guilty of this myself. I guess it's worth it to ask yourself, before you make a change to your code, am I fixing a leak, or am I just painting a stag's ass on this canoe?