My 5 Favorite Web Development Fallacies

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a fallacy is:

"an idea that a lot of people think is true but is in fact false." Cambridge Dictionary.

Inspired by The Eight Fallacies of Distributed Computing, I decided to make my own list of fallacies in web development.

These are my top 5:

• More developers means more speed.
• Estimations are useful.
• The team will stay the same during the whole project.
• More features are better.
• This code is temporary.

They are not the only ones I have experienced. But the most obvious ones that should make us think and they don’t.

Change my mind with a DM on Twitter or mention me with a tweet. I’d love this to be a discussion and update this page every week.

Bonus Tracks

I made a pretty long list of fallacies for this article. It would be a shame to lose others I liked but didn’t make it to the top 5. Here they are.

• All requirements are clear.
• Any developer can replace any other developer.
• Here is the MVP.
• The MVP is a full-fletched application with more features than competitors w/ multiple years in the market.
• We work with Agile Methodology, but we want this by this date so we can go live.
• Developers code eight hours per day.
• There is a right way to do things.
• Automated tests means no bugs.
• Time to write tests is taken in consideration.
• Agile development means fast development.
• The prototype will be thrown away.
• Code Reviews means clean code.
• Testing is taken into account in the estimations.
• Given a UI framework, building a new page is fast.
• Easy and fast are the same.
• You will see in time that you don't make it in time.
• Devs only need a few minutes for reporting.
• A static design is enough handover from design.
• Developers are just Oompa Loompas.
• Development is like building a building.
• Error handling is done in every task.
• Automated tests are taken care of in every task.
• Each feature is fully detailed.

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Don't hesitate to reach out to me if you have any questions or see an error. I highly appreciate it.

And thanks to JC, Miquel and Yusef for reviewing this article 🙏