Fractally Broken

Fractally broken a definition.

Fractal: A never ending pattern.
Broken: Not functioning properly.

This is a phrase I heard from Louis Taylor a few years ago and I absolutely love it. Edit: I have been told that the original source may have been https://eev.ee.

It means that however much you zoom in or out from a thing it has faults. In an almost recursive manner.

It really sums up some projects. You look at the whole system and think some very bad words. Then you look at a component and think the same. Finally, you end up reading individual lines of code and the words continue flowing.

I also composed a limerick:

There once was a very bad project,

With a fixed cost, scope and budget,

It grew fractally broken,

And the severs began smokin’,

so none of the dev’s wanted to touch it.