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 no matter how much you zoom in or out on 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.