ἐπὶ δηλήσει δὲ καὶ ἀδικίῃ εἴρξειν
The Hippocratic Oath remind doctors of timeless principles of their craft, like the famous First Do Not Harm.
If you were to write down the principles you want to be constantly reminded of in your programming craft, what would they be?
Top comments (16)
I'd want this worded in the most communicative way possible, but something along the lines of:
This relates to accessibility, but in general is about having empathy for the whole ecosystem of possible end users... Like, anyone who could benefit from this software should be able to, and take the time to consider them.
Talk with your users?
It can't be quite that simple because "talk to users" doesn't always scale or can't be the responsibility of everyone... More, like, "learn about users". Getting a sense, for example, of who might be bandwidth constrained vs who might never have to think about that. Talking to users could be part of the learning experience but isn't always achievable.
Right, it's one mean to an end. Maybe I can paraphrase Stephen Covey
=> Seek first to understand your users, then to be understood
watching a blind noncoder use a built-in/free screen reader on a slow connection work at adding an MX record changed the way I code forever. It was the most painful user experience I have ever witnessed. 40 minutes into it the new record still had not been added and the NS had almost been wiped out twice - would have been if I had not been watching.
Our oath might start with...
Hmm...
"Write it like it'll last forever, test it like it broke yesterday" 😉
Or something like that. There's probably a better way of putting it, but I think it's vital to keep the future users/maintainers in mind (even if they're your future self).
It's a tough one though; I know if I waited to release stuff until it was "future-proof", then I'd have finished very few projects.
Obviously no code is truly future-proof, but it's incredible to see some examples of legacy systems, long-running open-source codebases, and what's turning into generation-spanning software projects. Just because you think you'll get around to "fixing it later" doesn't necessarily mean you will. On the plus side - especially with open-source code - it means that good ideas generally stick around.
Great discussion prompt; sure got me thinking!
That is so good I might get it tattooed.
Love it, thanks!
How about these 2:
I especially like the last part, it sounds like something that would be in an oath.
You remind me of Martin Fawler saying
That sounds like a nice principle:
Yeah, I like that first one aswell!
Mine would be
Thou shall not push directly to master
No trunk based development then?
hm, programmers really are like doctors. people respect them and think they're wizards but in reality neither of them know what they are doing.