The virtue of boring

Unlike just about everything else in life, ‘boring’ is actually a positive attribute when it comes to software! We don’t want our programs to be spontaneous and interesting; we want them to stick to the script and predictably accomplish their business goals. In the words of Google engineer Robert Muth, ‘Unlike a detective story, the lack of excitement, suspense, and puzzles is actually a desirable property of source code.’

(from the Google Site Reliability Engineering book)