[sirmarksalot]

Consistency is often helpful, but you also need to be wary of cargo culting. For example, you see a server back end that uses an ORM model and you figure you'll implement your new feature using the same patterns you see there. Then a month later the author of the original code you cribbed comes by and asks you, "just out of curiosity, why did you feel the need to create five new database tables for your feature?"

I know, that's a pretty specific "hypothetical," but that experience taught me that copying for the sake of consistency only works if you actually understand what it is you're copying. And I was also lucky that the senior engineer was nice about it.