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Discussion on: I am a mediocre developer

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pedrojmfidalgopt profile image
pedrojmfidalgopt • Edited

Indeed I agree on all of it!
And at my feeelancer work I was presented to very poor code indeed made by others. No comments, no identations, no proper namming conventions, huge methods, ifs inside ifs inside ifs, no modular or refactoring approach ....
But in my opinion the best rule of thumb is indeed:

  • Keep it simple and always use a divide and conquer approach. Small things are easier to debug and if you build a lego it may be easier to understand which piece has problems.

And convice yourself, it is impossible to know everything so prepare yourself to learn something new every single day.

Poor software also happens because (usually) the person(s) that pays wants to pay as little as possible so even good developers limit the time they dedicate to it to the minimum assigned time to put the product running.
Project sponsors usually do not understand the required hours developers had to spend to properly understand a language or a product. That is why sometimes developers prefer to do project management, they earn a little more and do not spend hours looking at code, also they get much more overall visibility.
But in the end it's the technical persons that perform the work ...