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Every programmer has a little sewer system buried beneath them. Each morning it routes digital sewage to and fro, through home built mashers and sprockets and
by digitalsushi 13y ago
Every programmer has a little sewer system buried beneath them. Each morning it routes digital sewage to and fro, through home built mashers and sprockets and fittings and tubes and gears. It feels good to see a brand name logo on some of these devices, a self given high-five for doing it the Right Way, but invariably there is some lopsided widget bolted to the side with the signature of self.
It's always shameful to know this little sewer exists beneath us, our livelihood, our brain babies. To think of all the twists, turns, and dead ends, unknown waterfalls and geysers yet to be filed away in bug reports, it's sobering and makes the best of us self-hating.
To peruse other's code, seeing beautiful order, a source code aira, a single author's master work in symbols... is always the shortest path to shame in our own designs. Our intimacy with our own creations magnifies our self critique.
Of course I am ashamed of my code. It's the inverse mold of the wrinkly shape my brain is, and for others to see it is the barest, weakest thing I can share. One that I am paid to every day.
- michaelmior 13y agoVery poetic. I think my satisfaction with the code I write depends largely on the environment it was produced in. For code I write for myself, I'm generally fairly pleased at the time I write it. Of course this changes years later when I look back and wonder what possessed me to construct such a monstrosity. On the other hand, I find code written for pay is often uglier than I would like at the outset due to time constraints. But if it gets the job done and has high likelihood of being scrapped completely (as can often be the case when experimenting in a startup) then that's a tradeoff I'm willing to live with.