From Chesterton's fence to Chesterton's gap
Summary
The post introduces Chesterton’s fence as a principle for not tearing down existing code without understanding its purpose, and then extends the idea to Chesterton’s gap, critiquing the tendency to add large, unnecessary 10k-line PRs in open source. It advocates for empathy with prior design decisions, maintenance, and thoughtful contribution rather than defaulting to building new fences where none were needed.