Exception Driven Development

Definitions

1. A mocking phrase for building systems by layering one special-case exception after another instead of improving the underlying model. In engineering slang, exception-driven development is how many codebases become impossible to reason about cleanly.

   In plain English: Building software by piling on special cases instead of fixing the core model.

   Example: "The pricing engine had fallen into exception driven development, with so many partner overrides that the nominal base rules barely mattered anymore."

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