Fail by Default

By Zac Szewczyk on 2020/05/04 08:54:21 EST in Programming

I happened across The Law of Requisite Variety the other day, which states that a system for which D possible disruptions exist requires R countermeasures to keep itself stable, where R >= D. Having spent some time on my projects’ more theoretical side lately, I found this idea at once interesting and then familiar. Today, I want to talk about the simple way I apply this concept to my code, as a way to architect more reliable programs.

First, consider this script. It prompts the user to enter 0 or 1, then spells out “zero” or “one” depending on which the user chose.

number = input("Enter 0 or 1: ") if (number == “0”): message = "zero" elif (number == “1”): message = "one" print(message)

Although straightforward, even this simple example violates the Law of Requisite Variety: the number of possible inputs D contains more than just two numbers, 0 and 1: it actually contains every single combination of every possible input sequence in existence. As a result, an R of two is insufficient because it is infinitely smaller than the infinitely larger D.¹ If a user enters “a”, for example, the program will fail. We can fix this by changing our perspective: rather than expecting a certain subset (0 or 1) of an infinite number of possible strings, we can expect improper input and handle appropriate input by exception. Check out the revised example, below:

number = input("Enter 0 or 1: ") if (number == “0”): message = "zero" elif (number == “1”): message = "one" else: message = "error" print(message)

The user can now enter any possible string, but the script will not spell out “zero” or “one” unless he or she enters 0 or 1, respectively. Whereas the user could have caused the old script to enter an unstable state by entering “a”, that is now impossible because R equals D+2: for every possible input the script will print “error” (D), but there also exists two additional cases to account for the input equaling 0 or 1 (+2). We have satisfied the Law of Requisite Variety; it has now become impossible for the user to cause the script to enter an unstable state.

This short example illustrates the simple concept I use to apply Law of Requisite Variety to my code, as a way to architect more reliable programs: failing by default. Any time your program could possibly have more than one state, first fail for all of them (start with R=D), then add exceptions for acceptable cases (R += 1, R += 1, ...). This ensures your code will only proceed in a safe, known state, rather than in an unsafe one that might work on occasion. Such inconsistent bugs are the hardest to fix, but This One Simple Trick™ will help you avoid many of them.

I linked to an excellent article by Tobias Pfeiffer the other day, Best Practices for Working with Configuration in Python Applications, where he presented some good advice for writing more stable programs. I would submit this article, and the notion of failing by default, as an addendum.

↩ Heh.