If you aren’t learning, you are falling behind The field is constantly moving. New languages, new tools, new processes. You don’t need to learn all of them, but keeping up with what changes is useful. Work on code in your free time The best programmers I know have spent a lot of free time working… Read More »
Over my career, I’ve come to realize there are some important truths that you should keep in mind. The senior people have experience. Pay attention to them. Senior people have seen more and likely have insight into subtle and/or complicated issues. They do not always have insight into your issue. But, their experience should not… Read More »
When developing code, most of us would rather spend time writing code or talking to users to understand their problems than to spend time on process. Process does not need to be a dirty word, although most developers would disagree. Processes Suck Most processes imposed from outside the team suck. Partially, that is due to… Read More »
In order to be really good at any craft, including software development, you need to be good with your tools. For a software developer, your tools are not physical, but you need to know them well all the same. Any time you need to stop and look up information on your language or libraries, you… Read More »
I expect this one will upset a lot of people. It’s also a lie. But not as big a lie as you might think. Fighting the Language When I was starting out in programming, there was a statement that was pretty popular: “A bad programmer can write Fortran in any language.” This was not really… Read More »
In almost every field, people will grab onto some belief without any (rational) reason. Programmers often act and seem to believe that they are actually rational people and would not hold an irrational belief (at least where our field is concerned). When you look at your fellow developers, you can usually spot counter-examples. Like many… Read More »
What’s the most important thing we get from designing and writing code? It’s a question we don’t ask often enough. Mostly because it’s easy to assume the answer is obvious. Revenue? The business you are working for will often suggest that revenue is the most important thing about code. But, that doesn’t explain why some… Read More »
After seeing how our careful and thoughtful design changes over time, it should be obvious that some designs will not survive implementation or later maintenance. It should also make you wonder how to do a better job on design. Looking Back on your Design In the future, some of your great decisions will look naive.… Read More »
When people look at what they want to call Legacy Code, they don’t see a coherent system. They see an implementation that they can’t read. They see a design that is not simple/elegant enough. They see a pile of patches instead of a clean architecture. They wonder how any competent programmer could have made such… Read More »
One of my managers many years ago was in a meeting where someone from sales was disparaging our legacy code and he made a comment that has stayed with me for decades: “Legacy? Oh you mean the code that pays our paychecks?” The legacy system pays our paychecks Most code that hangs around long enough… Read More »