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"the longer the onions have been in the recipe, the longer the recipe has evolved in the presence of onions."

That is just an excellent explanation of why removing stuff from a working system can be so dangerous. Thank you.




And why we should write our recipes (code) carefully to imply intent such that dependencies like this are not created unnecessarily. Consider:

"Add one onion", vs "Dip piece of onion in mixture until it begins to fry"

Latter clearly indicates no aspect of the recipe should be a dependency on the onion or inherit properties from the onion as the onion will be removed before runtime (consumption)


This still wouldn't be sufficient in mechanical_fish's example. Someone might still remove the onions (and the needed proteins) after the introduction of thermometers with the reasoning that this would be a "simple" and "well understood" tweak.




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