Someone sent me a CR the other day. And the code went something like this:

function validateInputLanguage(input: InputOptions): void {
  // checking input is valid
  if (input.language) {
    // ....
    // we are good
    return;
  } else {
    input.language = defaultLang;
  }
}

The code here doesn’t matter that much though. I read the CR, put the following comments:

I would recommend to not mutate passed input, instead of returning the validation result plus reasons in the return value (instead of void).

Then the engineer relied to me this in the Slack:

Hi Mike, I saw your comments. I just follow what the original code patterns, the other places did the same kind of validations as well.

Every time people replied something like this, they basically shut down a door to ask why.

Yes, I understand there could be other places like this, but what if we start asking questions instead of just trying to get the job done?

• Why did we make such pattern in the first place?
• Does this pattern makes sense?
• Is there any other better ways to achieve the same thing?
• Is that risky to change the pattern now?
• How we can reduce the risks to break things but still can make the code slightly better than before?
• If now is not the right time, when do you think that time will be?

Come on, we all have things to do, why bother asking so many questions?

Every code change ultimately is an exercise for our brain, or a hidden conversation to the original author. Even though we could still ended up making the same code change, but with these questions in mind will help you making a bigger impact in the long term.