The "Dead Leaves" Guy

My family and I have lived in the same house for the past 24 years. Once or twice a year I squeeze myself between our "Florida Room" and the neighbor's garage to clean out the oak leaves that end up there. It's a tight fit, and not a task I enjoy. When it's done, I step back, dust off my hands (figuratively and literally) and take the green waste bin out to the street for pickup.

I've always gotten along well with our next door neighbors, who have been there for more than a decade. Last weekend I noticed the husband up the roof of his garage, merrily sweeping the oak leaves into the space that I have been squeezing into all these years. He looked a little sheepish, but said he had been doing this all along. I told him that if I hadn't been cleaning them out, we would have had oak trees trying to grow between our buildings. I then assured him that it was OK with me, and we went to our various tasks.

I have also been cleaning out a lot of "dead leaves" that others have put into our code at work. I am concerned when I see code that is so obviously cut-and-pasted instead of refactored. I sometimes wonder what people think when they are doing this. Are they concerned because they don't understand the code well enough to do refactoring? Are they too overloaded to think about the fact that what they put in may sprout into oak trees in the worst possible place? Are they too rushed to think a few months down the road, or a year or two?

It concerns and mystifies me.