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I find your position a bit idealistic. Redoing work you just did is tantamount to critisicm. I agree that everyone should welcome constructive criticism, but s

by yipbub 7y ago

I find your position a bit idealistic. Redoing work you just did is tantamount to critisicm. I agree that everyone should welcome constructive criticism, but some tact is necessary in applying it. > I also think that a salaried engineer who thinks that a piece of code he or she (but almost always he) wrote is "his" or "hers" is totally wrong. It's the company's code. Having a false sense of ownership towards that code will just cause grief for that engineer and friction for his or her team. I think some places value a sense of ownership because that person then becomes responsible for maintaining that code and reviewing changes. There is someone accountable for it. Not that they have any special rights to that code.

bjourne 7y ago
Please don't consider refactoring or rewriting equivalent to redoing. Refactoring or rewriting means that I'm adding my name to the code, but I'm NOT removing yours. You still did the hard work of coming up with the original functionality even if it is later changed. Refactoring does emphatically not mean that your original work had no value. Like if someone were to change all my spelling and grammatical errors in my top comment. I wouldn't mind at all. Hell, someone could even rephrase the comment entirely and remove the weak points and emphasize the strong ones as long as the main message is the same. I'm not a native English speaker so I'd probably learn from the experience.