Redesign without fear

Avoid merge conflicts with side-by-side changes. Tim Ottinger published a blog post titled Why redesign doesn't happen (enough). It's a good article that you can read in five minutes, and I recommend that you do. The gist of it is that larger redesigns in established code bases rarely happen because changing too much code in one go risks conflicting with parallel work being done by colleagues. Tim Ottinger argues that this often leads to merge conflicts, which again reflects poorly on the well-meaning programmer who undertook the work of improvement. His final question is "What interventions would defang this fear and allow teams to move the design and architecture forward?" Why redesign doesn't happen (enough), Tim Ottinger, 2026 One effective method is side-by-side implementation work. Add new APIs rather than changing existing code # As I describe in Code That Fits in Your Head, you can apply the Strangler Fig pattern at the code level, too. Instead of implementing a a new design…