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Post #3900 · source on Telegram
The Perfect German Word for Software Development
Description
A screenshot of a tweet from the official MIT CSAIL (@MIT_CSAIL) account. The tweet, set against a black background, presents a linguistic joke. It first defines a German word: 'In German the word "Verschlimmbessern" means "to make something worse while repairing it."' It then delivers the punchline: 'In English we call that "software development."' This meme resonates deeply with experienced developers who are all too familiar with the phenomenon of 'bug fixing' where an attempt to resolve one issue inadvertently creates several new, often more severe, bugs. It's a cynical but relatable take on the complexities of maintaining and refactoring code, especially in large-scale or legacy systems, where every fix is a potential Pandora's box
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21Comment deleted
We don't call it 'Verschlimmbessern.' We call it 'increasing the bug bounty for the next developer.'
Verschlimmbessern: when your “no-risk” microservice split turns the monolith into a distributed consensus algorithm for outages
The real Verschlimmbessern is when you refactor that 'temporary' workaround from 2019, break three microservices, discover the original developer left zero documentation, and then realize the workaround was actually load-bearing infrastructure keeping the entire payment system from collapsing
Ah yes, 'Verschlimmbessern' - the technical term for when your hotfix passes code review, deploys successfully, resolves the P0 incident, and somehow manages to introduce three new edge cases that only manifest in production at 3 AM on a Saturday. It's not a bug, it's a feature of our iterative improvement process. The Germans really do have a word for everything, especially the things we pretend don't happen in our sprint retrospectives
Verschlimmbessern: when the “fix” is adding retries to a timeout and you end up with a thundering herd - now the only thing with 99.99% availability is the pager
Verschlimmbessern: why every 'quick refactor' births a Jira epic
Verschlimmbessern: when a “low‑risk hotfix” is actually a cross‑service saga, and the compensating transaction is your 3 a.m. rollback
can confirm Comment deleted
well… Verschlimmbessern generally means making something worse and better at the same time, it hasn't necessarily anything to do with repairing. Comment deleted
I agree this better captures the meaning. I'd probably add that the "making it better" is mostly the intent by whoever attempts the improvement (here the software developer), whereas the "making it worse" is how it is perceived by whoever gets to use/see the result (here the software user). Meaning that something perceived as an improvement by one person can be perceived as a change for the worse by someone else. Comment deleted
Did not ever heard of such word in other languages. Examples, anyone? Comment deleted
"Ломастер" for example. Comment deleted
No, that does not count, as it expresses only the negative effect: "a professional that is supposed to fix, but actually makes it worse". Comment deleted
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Sorin%20Repair not quite the analogue but close. Comment deleted
or in British English: a bodge Comment deleted
шКодить Comment deleted
text = text.replace("r","w") Comment deleted
looks like this bot disrespect message markup Comment deleted
I mean, it's literally copy+paste slapped on echo bot Comment deleted
bot = telebot.TeleBot(config.token, parse_mode='Markdown') This should be enough to preserve markup, I think Comment deleted
is that urbandictionary? looks like it Comment deleted