Quick Fixes

Quickfix is a fast, dirty & temporary solution or workaround to a complicated problem. They’re generally easier, less costly to implement and faster to get results. Because of their short-term advantages especially in such fast-paced work environment nowadays, they’re often times favorable and the person who do those quick fixes is usually praised as “clever”.

Fix the root not the roof!

Unfortunately, these quick fixes have too many downsides. They’re temporary, create dependencies and don’t mean to last. Most importantly, they fail to address the underlying problems. It’s like giving fishers a life vest so that he doesn’t die at sea today without teaching him how to swim.

Update on Dec 31, 2014: In Vietnam, they want to have buses specifically for women to avoid sexual molest. Sure, it certainly would help a lot of women avoid sexual abuses. But the root problem is apparently not the men or the sexual abusing acts themselves; it’s the education, the laws, etc. These buses should only be used as simply a temporary solution while they popularize sexual education and increase the abuse penalties, etc. It could never be a real & permanent solution.

You can’t solve a problem by avoiding it. Face it instead!

Worst still, a quick fix might solve or offer a workaround to a (minor) problem but in return could cause potentially bigger problems to be solved.

Quick fixes are particularly popular in the world of programmers where they often have to write some quick fix codes to keep their programs working.

For example, MVC is a good old programming design which separates Model (database) from Controllers (does the name already tells it all?) and Views (display). It means you’ve gotta design your database on Model, do the logic on Controllers and display the results on View. However, sometimes some `clever` programmers want to fix a logic issue directly on the View. They may somehow manage to fix that problem but it will leaves its team mates facing serious consequences in the near future.

Quick fixes are a damaging approach. They are for cleverly lazy people.