3 ms·

This is the same old "developers are too focused on quality" story, is focusing on customers important? Yes. Is it the job of the "developer", usually, no. I'v

by kykat 9mo ago

This is the same old "developers are too focused on quality" story, is focusing on customers important? Yes. Is it the job of the "developer", usually, no. I've seen it in juniors and in myself, entering into a company excited after hearing all these advices, and realizing that the job is really to "just code". You do not communicate with the customer, you do not decide the business direction, you simply code, and make sure there are as little issues as possible (usually not stated explicitly), and that new features (as requested by management/customers) are implemented as quickly as possible. I don't know how to respond to this "developers shouldn't focus on quality" argument any more. Is shipping fast important? Of course. Is understanding the customer important? Definitely. But why is there always this animosity towards "developers focused on quality"? Where I worked my experience has been the exact opposite, many coworkers have been writing slop long before LLMs were popular, all kinds of horrible hacks, the constant talk about quality was not "we are working on quality all the time", but "quality is so bad my life is so painful". So, my question to all that fight this "quality obsessed developer" is: Why have I never met any developer obsessed about the code quality, but I hear about them all the time? EDIT: To be more concise, I think that the "perfectionist developer" is simply a scapegoat for the inherent difficulties and challenges of software development.

exe34 9mo ago
I don't focus on quality because I like quality. I couldn't give a flying toss. I care about quality because tomorrow I still have to work with this stuff. In 10 years, I have to remember why I decided to do it this way, and I have to be able to extend it to satisfy the business needs then. I leave it in a way I won't want to find the original developer (me) and go full Law Abiding Citizen on them.
- kykat 9mo ago
  Definitely, we agree on this. It's about stability and maintainability, I couldn't care less about naming standards, indentation rules or whatever, as long as it's consistent.
- marcosdumay 9mo ago
  We are an extreme minority. AFAIK, most developers out there want to spend the minimum time on the problem right now, and plans to jump ship tomorrow into somebody's else mess.
- izacus 9mo ago
  > I don't focus on quality because I like quality. I couldn't give a flying toss. Why not? Did noone in your life teach you to build things well and take pride in your work?
  - exe34 9mo ago
    That's correct.
izacus 9mo ago
> So, my question to all that fight this "quality obsessed developer" is: Why have I never met any developer obsessed about the code quality, but I hear about them all the time? I wonder where those guys are too, since most of the things I see are poorly made slop. This is similar to the "premature optimization" scaring - I've never seen those engineers going into the weeds optimizing bytes in code... but I've see so much code that's been 10.000 - 1.000.000x slower than it had to be and hurt users.

by kykat 9mo ago

exe34 9mo ago

I don't focus on quality because I like quality. I couldn't give a flying toss. I care about quality because tomorrow I still have to work with this stuff. In 10 years, I have to remember why I decided to do it this way, and I have to be able to extend it to satisfy the business needs then. I leave it in a way I won't want to find the original developer (me) and go full Law Abiding Citizen on them.

kykat 9mo ago
Definitely, we agree on this. It's about stability and maintainability, I couldn't care less about naming standards, indentation rules or whatever, as long as it's consistent.
marcosdumay 9mo ago
We are an extreme minority. AFAIK, most developers out there want to spend the minimum time on the problem right now, and plans to jump ship tomorrow into somebody's else mess.
izacus 9mo ago
> I don't focus on quality because I like quality. I couldn't give a flying toss. Why not? Did noone in your life teach you to build things well and take pride in your work?
- exe34 9mo ago
  That's correct.

izacus 9mo ago

> So, my question to all that fight this "quality obsessed developer" is: Why have I never met any developer obsessed about the code quality, but I hear about them all the time? I wonder where those guys are too, since most of the things I see are poorly made slop. This is similar to the "premature optimization" scaring - I've never seen those engineers going into the weeds optimizing bytes in code... but I've see so much code that's been 10.000 - 1.000.000x slower than it had to be and hurt users.