Poka Yoke – Saving Projects with Hyper-Defensive Programming

When working in a medium to large team on the same codebase, it can sometimes become hard to understand each other's code and how to use it. Various solutions exist to help with this. For example, you can agree to follow a set of coding standards to make the code more readable for each other, or use a framework that's known to all (we've got a great Laravel intro premium course here).

However, this is often not enough, especially when someone has to dig back into a part of the application written some time ago to fix a bug or add a new feature. It can be quite hard to remember how particular classes were intended to work, both on their own and in combination with each other. At that point, it becomes easy to accidentally introduce side effects or bugs without realizing it.

These mistakes might get caught in quality assurance, but there's a realistic chance they might slip through. And even if they get caught, it can take a lot of time to send the code back and get it fixed.

So how can we prevent this? Enter "Poka Yoke".

What is Poka Yoke?

Poka Yoke is a Japanese term which roughly translates to "mistake-proofing". The term
originated in lean manufacturing, where it refers to any mechanism that helps a machine operator avoid mistakes.

Outside of manufacturing, Poka Yoke is also often used in consumer electronics. Take, for example, a SIM card, which can only fit one way a sim tray because of its asymmetrical shape.

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