The Blindfolded Ninja Model of Software Development

The ancient and respected team of Science Ninja is amazing. For centuries (or so it seems) they’ve protected the temple of Llabdum. The temple is old, with many places showing signs of previous attacks, or simply crumbling rock and weapons still in the skeletal hands of fallen enemies. Or maybe, you know, just lego bricks left lying about by younger Ninja-to-be.

People always marvel at the antics of the Ninja. As they practice moving between different parts of the temple, they put on blindfolds and go from one place on the defences to the other. Some places, they manage to walk in the exact rhythm needed to avoid the lego bricks on the floor, with running strides of the exact needed length, and that final jump at the end of the corridor. Some of the more experienced Ninja know how to cross the ancient garden, with its many treacherous walls, pits filled with blades, and snap-wires intended to trap unsuspecting intruders. They jump, flip, pirouette, land on their fingertips before doing a perfectly timed series of flip-flops through a line of moving stone wheels, ending up on the southern wall ready to defend the temple.

When a visiting warrior, who was sent with a team of eXPerienced soldiers, sees all this, he asks: isn’t that a little cumbersome? Wouldn’t you be able to move more quickly if you got rid of all that rubble? And why have traps inside your temple?

The Ninja scoffed at him. You obviously do not have our skills and experience, so you are not qualified to judge our defenses. The warrior, having just stepped into a particularly nasty piece of lego, winced, and suggested that he and his soldiers at least clear out the main corridor, so that they, in their untrained ways, could reach the two main walls quickly. And so it was done.

The soldiers picked up pieces of lego from all over the floor of the corridor. They found many, and some had to be very carefully extracted so as not to damage the ancient floor any further. They repaired the floor as well as possible, restoring the mosaic, with the picture becoming clearer every day. With the lego-bricks, they actually fortified a part of the southern wall that had been crumbling, but was now restored to a shining, if oddly multi-colored, unassailable wall.

At first, the Ninja still went through the corridor in their traditional pace, with irregular jumps and steps avoiding the now no longer existing hurdles. The next attack on the temple, though, the soldiers ran through the corridor at full speed, and were at the defenses before any of the Ninja. The shame was unbearable, and the Ninja got together to discuss changes to their customs. They talked with the visiting warrior, and had a look at the inner garden. They sectioned off one part (the pit with blades, I think it was), and started the work of making that part of their codebase accessible.