Comments on: Don't Be Ashamed of Your Code

By: Gaurav

Gaurav — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Nice post.. I can completely relate to what you are pointing out

By: Tim Kadlec

Tim Kadlec — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks for the comments guys!

@Cattp & @Thomas – Guess I’ll have to cut Jeff that check now for advertising! :)

By: Reid Carlberg

Reid Carlberg — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The only thing on all this is that, no matter what pressure you’re under and no matter how quickly you are pushed toward coding, you need to keep traveling through the learning curve. It’s OK to make sacrifices early on as long as a) you learn something that helps you get better and b) you ACTUALLY get better. It’s that b) where people seem to sometimes get stuck.

By: Cattp

Cattp — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Hey Now Tim,
Nice Post, I saw it on a screen shot on coding horror so I had to read it.
Thx 4 the info,
Catto

By: Thomas Johnson

Thomas Johnson — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Yep that screen shot on coding horror was some pretty good adverstising.

By: Michael McLawhorn

Michael McLawhorn — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes the difference between your categories of ‘do what it takes to get it out’ and ‘try to do it with art, try to improve your art’ has a lot to do with the environment a developer is in. Under pressure and stress, we all cut corners on elegance.

By: Guy Davis

Guy Davis — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

You raise some good points. We need to encourage developers to try out new ideas and create innovative solutions. I'd never want my opinion to have dissuaded Gavin King from creating Hibernate all those years ago.

On the other hand, for every Gavin King and Hibernate, there lots of crappy attempts at data persistence. Then subsequent developers are left to clean up the mess caused these home-grown ORM approaches.

So, it seems the critical thing is to know when to call it quits. A developer should have the courage to try and build something themselves, but also have the courage to discard their code when a demonstratively better library comes along.

For example, a Java developer who hacks together some data persistence without knowing the definition of ORM or having heard of Hibernate. Maybe they'll get lucky and create an alternative that is better in some cases such as iBatis. However, it's more likely they'll create a big pile of crap. :)

By: Dave Doyle

Dave Doyle — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Oooooh… This is an interesting comment on developer ‘types’ but I’ve always thought that if you don’t hate the code you wrote 6 months ago you’re not going to last long in the industry. I appreciate that not everyone is a superstar (i.e. yours truly) but I don’t see how your first developer type manages to stay employed. I can see them going on just fine for a few years… but surely some growth is required. That’s been the case in the places I’ve worked. Am I missing something?

By: Tim Kadlec

Tim Kadlec — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Quick comments guys!

@Guy - You absolutely hit it on the head when you said 'A developer should have the courage to try and build something themselves, but also have the courage to discard their code when a demonstratively better library comes along.'

It is important that a developer tries something themselves, but also that they are not to proud to recognize when someone else has presented a better solution. If a developer has both those traits, they are on the way to a very successful career.

@Dave - I think the success rate of the first kind of developer is much lower, but there are still some that seem to hang around. Many aren't so much unwilling to learn a new effect, but learning a new solution to an effect they have already used is a different matter.