4 ms·
A year? Sometimes, a weekend is enough. ;-) Sometimes, of course, you write code that is just right, and it still is after a year. But, yes, that "What-was-I-
by krylon 10y ago
A year? Sometimes, a weekend is enough. ;-)
Sometimes, of course, you write code that is just right, and it still is after a year.
But, yes, that "What-was-I-Thinking" moment happens on a fairly regular basis. ;-)
- fapjacks 10y agoYeah absolutely. I always reduced this to "three months" and passed the phrase around to juniors, etc. And when I interviewed at the last company I worked for, the CEO specifically said, "If you aren't horrified by something you wrote three months ago..." And that's when I knew I wanted to work there (among many other reasons, of course).
- hinkley 10y agoI would worry that this would encourage more tech debt than I'm comfortable with. I already struggle with people shrugging off obviously predictable consequences of their thoughtlessness. I kind of expect people to at least attempt to think three months out. Who knows what we'll be doing in six but cmon.
- fapjacks 10y agoDo you really look at code you wrote three months ago -- or any code you've just written -- and not see a lot of things you could improve? This isn't about not having foresight or failing to plan or not designing well.
- hinkley 10y agoEvery time I am about to do a commit, I look at the code and give myself fifteen minutes to make it better. Always have (probably a habit I learned doing homework in college? I'm not quite sure). In the grand scheme of things you'd hardly notice that it takes me a little bit longer. Over time those improvements become habituated and I just do a lot of them while I'm coding. Especially when I get stuck. It's not in like cleaning while you cook. Once you have a tempo it hardly takes any longer to prepare the food but you don't leave yourself with a mess that discourages you from doing it again.
- fapjacks 10y agoYou seem to be implying that you only ever need fifteen minutes after any programming task to make all possible improvements that could ever happen to that code.
- AnkhMorporkian 10y agoPfft, I immediately regret any code I write!
- Gravityloss 10y agoSo you have code reviews?
- pvg 10y agoAmateur. I regret it unwritten.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoThat's the best strategy. The most bug-free code is the one that wasn't written in the first place, therefore I refuse to write code unless absolutely necessary :).
- AnkhMorporkian 10y agoI bet I could screw it up anyways.
- jacobush 10y agoAn Ankhmorporkian always can.
- animal531 10y agoThis goes hand in hand with one of my favourite IT jokes, which says that the perfect system has no users.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoUnfortunately, I've seen IT departments taking this joke as an axiom. It seems common in schools and universities, where the infrastructure is maintained by being so limited as to be completely useless - and hence unused, and thus without problems caused by users...
- hinkley 10y agoWhat'll really smash your ego is saying "Jesus, who wrote this?", hitting the 'blame' button and finding out you wrote it...