Why do bad tools spread so easily? Whether an in-house abomination that shouldn’t have seen the light of day or a commercial, expensive bag of bugs with abominable UIs and cryptic error messages, bad tools seem to spread quicker than what logic would deem reasonable. There is something especial about badly conceived tools. The worse the tool, the faster it spreads, and the more strategically it positions itself as the cornerstone of an architecture that would collapse without it. Before you know it, the bad tool becomes irreplaceable. Can it get worse? Of course, and that’s when bad tools reach enterprise level.