On reading the repository.
A buyer wants to know what a code audit is for. The counsel proposes a small experiment with a single file.
BUYER"We have the financials. We have the customer list. What does the code add?"/q:1
COUNSEL"What the seller cannot say about it on the call."/q:2
BUYER"They will tell us what we ask."
COUNSEL"They will tell us what they know. The repository will tell us what they have forgotten."/q:3
⁂
BUYER"Plato thought written words were dead — that they only repeat themselves. Why read what cannot answer back?"/q:4
COUNSEL"You remember the line correctly. In the Phaedrus, at 275d, Socrates says writing always 'signifies one and the same thing.' He meant it as a complaint. In diligence, it is a feature."/q:5
BUYER"Explain."
COUNSEL"The CEO will tell you four versions of the same answer in four meetings. The code tells you one. The one is what was actually built."/q:6
⁂
BUYER"What does an audit actually do? Concretely."
COUNSEL"It asks three things. Whether the system does what is claimed. Whether it does only what is claimed. Whether the people who wrote it could write the next thing."/q:7
BUYER"And the last is the hardest."
COUNSEL"It is the only one. The first two are spreadsheets."/q:8
⁂
BUYER"Try this. Pick one file. Tell me what you'd learn."/q:9
COUNSEL"Give me their payments module. In a morning I will tell you whether they handle refunds, whether they reconcile against the bank, who wrote it, when, how many times it has been rewritten, and whether the person who could rewrite it next still works there."/q:10
BUYER"From one file?"
COUNSEL"From one file and its history. The file is the testimony. The history is the cross-examination."/q:11
⁂
BUYER"And if we skip the audit?"
COUNSEL"Then you have bought the version of the company that fits in a deck. The rest you will discover, but no longer at the price of discovery."/q:12
⁂
Coda. The buyer commissioned the audit. The payments module had not reconciled against the bank in nineteen months. The person who could have rewritten it had left in March. Price came down eleven percent. Closing was not delayed.
— D. A., this 21st of June, MMXXVI.