Experience++; Job satisfaction–?
A couple of weeks ago I was having an informal discussion at work about another developer’s performance on a project. The developer had strayed from company convention and in his eyes had used many ‘best practices’ to improve things.
However, despite his best interests, the implementation was not only detrimental from a maintenance perspective (having increased the cognitive load for other developers by breaking from ‘the norm’) but also from a technical standpoint it was ‘best practice’ mis-used.
This was an unfortunate predicament but far from unique. A combination of inexperience and programmer’s ego had lead him to re-invent the wheel. Development time had doubled due to re-writing existing code (that worked).
I didn’t write this post to bash this developer as I’ve stood in his shoes on more than one occasion and re-written tried and tested code because I could make it ‘better’. The mentality of good developers is to do things right, not provide short cuts for convenience.
“I could use less code to do the same thing more efficiently and make it more cohesive, great!”
I thought to myself, so I did… it was fun; I was learning, getting to try out all my new found knowledge but it took me twice as long (at least) to fix bugs and implement new features as I re-invented the code base, byte at a time.
Fast forward to the present, when reflecting on this conversation I realised I still shared many of the same ideals as said developer. The key difference experience has taught me is to leave my experimentation at home and try not to bring it to work unless I’m confident that a solution that looks great in theory is also great solution in practice. Don’t make work your play ground.
Not being the developer in question and observing another’s work provided me with a different perspective. It allowed me to see how dissolved we developers can become with the problem and not see the bigger picture - we’re there to help run a business.
I find this both motivating and depressing. Motivating because of the responsibility and opportunity to produce a great product, on the flip side depressing because I’m not sure commercial programming still leaves room for what attracted me to programming in the first place… fun and freedom for creativity on the job.
I think the fun factor that every programmer feels when they first start or learn a new way of doing something will always be on a rocky road of high and lows. Gaining experience means those highs are spaced further apart.
Merry Christmas!
Update: I know it should be satisfaction minus minus but Wordpress thinks otherwise! (dammit, it won’t even let me write it in this post)
