>>Peter,
>> Do you actually employ this technique? If so are you still working as a developer? This style of programming has been around for years, it is usually employed by very junior developers and was referred to as poor programming. If you are employing this technique I truly feel for the person that gets stuck maintaining one of your applications.
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>Brian,
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>It is a pity that you removed all text that you are reacting on. Let me re-insert a piece of text from the post you reacted on:
>As I see it, Thundering Train Programming is a legitimate technique, at least for parts of an application, if it is based on a functional design that says that certain conditions will always be true.
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>I think that, if we look at the details of our applications, we all apply this technique to a certain degree at places, probably without being aware of it or having had a name for it.
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>I also think all who are replying with words like "that's bad programming" do not fully understand the psychological aspects that are involved in programming. The counterpart of Thundering Train Programming may well be a defensive programming style that is the result of fear, fear of being blamed for every flaw in the appplication. The programmer will therefore spend precious time on programming many checks and double-checks that will always (yes, litterally always) gonna evaluate to the same result.
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>When applied to the right parts of an application Thundering Train Programming is legitimate and probably even superior, as I see it. What parts? While being in the station, the train personnel must be cautious, because the users can show varying behavior. When leaving the station the train driver can increase speed and needs not check whether or not there are actually rails. No, the rails will be supposed to be there, simple. Upon entering the next station, cautious behavior is required again. Regard at least the user input windows as stations.

Then why do trains have horns, brakes or even conductors? Should be a simple piece of code to drive the train. If the train runs out of control, it is not because there are no precautions. There are always precautions.