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> Understood as senior: Legacy code that I wrote myself is hard to read. As it should be. If your code from a five to ten years ago doesn't make you cringe at

> Understood as senior: Legacy code that I wrote myself is hard to read. As it should be. If your code from a five to ten years ago doesn't make you cringe at least a little bit, the right way to view that is not that you were doing a good job back then, but that you haven't gotten any better since then.

toxik 7y ago
I disagree with this perspective. You of yesteryear is in many ways just another programmer you have to work with; if that makes you cringe, you may be taking a bit too much pride in your work.
- kbenson 7y ago
  > You of yesteryear is in many ways just another programmer you have to work with Taking that idea to the extreme of not having any feeling of ownership or pride (or lack thereof) in your past work seems rather silly to me. It wasn't just some other programmer, it was you. I'm not saying you should cringe because the code is bad, but because you should have a sense of "well, I could have saved myself some trouble or made this cleaner/more obvious if I only knew then what I know now."
  - Retra 7y ago
    Or maybe you cringe at your old 'good' code because you spent too much time on things that ultimately didn't matter.
fendy3002 7y ago
It isn't as simple as better skilled or not. Many times having more understanding about the problem may open your eyes to better / simpler design, or you now don't have any rushing matter that fuel bad design in the past.
Scarblac 7y ago
There are absolutely things I was better at back then, mostly because then I spent all my time doing nothing but programming and now a lot of time goes to other activities (meetings, planning, writing, etc).
- kbenson 7y ago
  Well, yeah, good point. I guess I should temper that with if you're still a full time professional software engineer. I wouldn't expect it to apply to someone that moves partially of fully to a different type of job or activity.

toxik 7y ago

I disagree with this perspective. You of yesteryear is in many ways just another programmer you have to work with; if that makes you cringe, you may be taking a bit too much pride in your work.

kbenson 7y ago
> You of yesteryear is in many ways just another programmer you have to work with Taking that idea to the extreme of not having any feeling of ownership or pride (or lack thereof) in your past work seems rather silly to me. It wasn't just some other programmer, it was you. I'm not saying you should cringe because the code is bad, but because you should have a sense of "well, I could have saved myself some trouble or made this cleaner/more obvious if I only knew then what I know now."
- Retra 7y ago
  Or maybe you cringe at your old 'good' code because you spent too much time on things that ultimately didn't matter.

fendy3002 7y ago

It isn't as simple as better skilled or not. Many times having more understanding about the problem may open your eyes to better / simpler design, or you now don't have any rushing matter that fuel bad design in the past.

Scarblac 7y ago

There are absolutely things I was better at back then, mostly because then I spent all my time doing nothing but programming and now a lot of time goes to other activities (meetings, planning, writing, etc).

kbenson 7y ago
Well, yeah, good point. I guess I should temper that with if you're still a full time professional software engineer. I wouldn't expect it to apply to someone that moves partially of fully to a different type of job or activity.