A fence is a man made object that takes cost and effort to construct. They tend to be placed with some forethought as to what they are building a barrier from or to. To remove the fence without understanding why it’s there can have unintended consequences.
See also:
- An example in software development is load-bearing quirks
Links to this note
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Past Experience Is a Repetoire Not a Playbook There’s a tendency for new people joining a company to immediately draw from their past and implement the things they’ve seen succeed but there is danger in treating experience as a playbook. It can be introduce prematurely and become too much process at the wrong time. It might not match the context of the new environment and cause more problems. 
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When I First Started Programming When I first started programming, I thought everyone else was better than me at coding. I read about something new and thought I should do that too because they must know better. 
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The grug brained developer is the counterpoint of the big brained developer.