One of two SoftwareDevelopmentAttitudes. The directing attitude says that since most developers aren't that good (it's rumored that almost 50% are below average) we need to direct the way they do things. This direction is to prevent them from causing harm to the system they are working on. Typically this attitude manifests itself in designs and tools that prevent developers from doing certain things, limiting what they can do to keep them away from complex areas.

People with an EnablingAttitude criticize this whips-and-chains attitude by saying you can't foolproof anything, because fools are ingenious and will figure out how to abuse any system.