How I patched my lawn is also an example of a software patch.  The bug is encountered, a solution is designed and tested that addresses the problem, and the solution is implemented.  Usually the individual responsible for designing the patch must take it upon himself to ensure that the patched code will not impact any of the other functions of the system.  This can be a difficult task to accomplish depending on the designer’s history with the application, availability of dependency documentation, and complexity of the system.  Within database applications the design difficulty is also heightened to include designing the patch to appropriately respond to all available environment or data configurations.  This responsibility should not be taken lightly nor assigned randomly because the results of a hasty patch could develop long lasting issues.

Back to my lawn.  After I patched my lawn I followed the watering instructions from the sod cutter and my new sod pieces began to grow in nicely.  A few weeks went by and I noticed that my new sod, and the lawn around the new sod, was starting to brown.  I began to become concerned so I enlisted the advice of a few of my neighbors.  I am relatively new to Florida, and since I have been here I have really only been maintaining my lawn, not troubleshooting it.  I carefully explained the history of my actions and asked each one for their advice.  Their responses varied greatly: too much water, too little water, contaminated water supply, and encounter with deadly chemicals.  Attempting to not spend any more money then I had to, I slowly tried each of the different advised remedies.  Meanwhile my lawn was continuing to deteriorate.

The software parallel here is that following a patch, the system may appear to work correctly. However, over time the underlying effect of a poorly designed software update will produce unexplainable failures in the application.  From there, the path forward is either to continue using the same approach to fix each of the problems that arise, or to step back and re-evaluate the entire application in light of all of the modifications.

Eventually this is what I did for my lawn.  I came to realize that I was incapable of fixing my lawn on my own, or with the help of my neighbors, and therefore I called a professional out to evaluate my situation and provide a path forward.  After a 10 minute conversation it was determined that my newly applied sod had contained a fungus which then spread to the rest of my lawn.  They applied an appropriate treatment to the lawn and my grass stopped deteriorating.  Unfortunately this effort only saved my backyard, my front yard was beyond repair and will need to be completely replaced.