Coincidence Coding

Coincidence coding means making code work without understanding why it works. Coincidence coding means changing code until it appears to work without understanding why. Coincidence coding means changing code until it seems to work without understanding the reason. Coincidence coding means stopping once the happy path works without understanding the logic. Developers should understand the mechanism before accepting a working result. Developers should explain logic before committing code. The correction for coincidence coding is to understand the cause, mechanism, and reason the solution resolves the issue. Useful comments explain why logic exists instead of restating what the code does. Coincidence coding is risky because the developer cannot explain behavior, reason about edge cases, or predict different conditions. Code that appears to work but cannot be explained is treated as risky gambling. Coincidence coding creates fragile solutions and makes future debugging harder. Coincidence coding creates fragility by layering changes on accidental behavior. Coincidence coding leaves the developer without a reliable mental model of the system, bug, or fix. Relying on trial and error may…