difference between anti-pattern and bad habit

[ Category - Anti-patterns ]

The key difference about anti-patterns compared to regular bad habits are that they have solutions, so the key is in identification rather than prevention.

I.e. smoking is a bad habit, and the smoker knows this. The difficulty in quitting is not one of identification. The difficulty is following through with quitting.

An anti-pattern on the other hand is one like Brook's Law:

adding more resources to project slows the project down if it's already late in the project. This is from the coordination overhead.

With knowledge of this anti-pattern, we can avoid it. Identification was major hurdle, not follow-through.