Chesterton's Fence
G. K. Chesterton · 1929
"Don't tear down a fence until you know why it was put up."
You encounter a rule, a process, or a fence in a field with no obvious purpose. The naive move is to remove it. Chesterton's rule: first understand why it's there, and only then decide whether it's safe to remove.
Most existing systems encode dead assumptions and hidden functions. The dead assumptions look silly; the hidden functions look invisible. Reformers remove both, and only notice the second when something breaks weeks later. The fix is not conservatism — it's discovery: interview the people who lived through the reason before you touch the fence.
A new engineer wants to delete a mysterious cron job no one documents. Chesterton's Fence says:
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The explanation above is written with AI assistance. These are the originals — go to them to check it.
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