I have read multiple articles of this kind, where colleagues are blaming specific practices. I believe that the root problem here is that engineers do not work as owners of their projects. Every time a programmer touch a code base is an opportunity to improve code quality which is a hint for spotting junior developers.
A real senior developer should detect when the garbage is piling up and fix it. Even if management does not want to allocate time doing refactor. I would prefer to get fire for doing the correct things than blindly accepting all requests from management pretending that our codebase is healthy.
The rule of the boy scouts is: “Always leave the campground cleaner than you found it”.
Learn something new every day.
- I am a senior software engineer working in industry, teaching and writing on software design, SOLID principles, DDD and TDD.
Location
Buenos Aires
Education
Computer Science Degree at Universidad de Buenos Aires
Good luck with that if you have a family.
Be real, sometimes you will have time and sometimes no.
Part of the seniority is based on social skills that will convince management.
That is our duty as professionals. The best programmer I've ever worked with once told me every time product/management/client is taking the wrong decision and you let that happen, you are failing as a professional programmer.
Many colleagues do not think in this way but we should start to see this like a patient saying to the doctor they do not want this or that treatment because they do not like it. It is our responsibility to inform the people that pay our checks that they are going against their self-interests.
In practice, though, sometimes it takes too much time to achieve this.
Sometimes it's a battle that can't be won.
Sometimes you need the job more than you need to fight this fight.
And also, some people don't like having these kinds of conversations too, and that's fine.
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I have read multiple articles of this kind, where colleagues are blaming specific practices. I believe that the root problem here is that engineers do not work as owners of their projects. Every time a programmer touch a code base is an opportunity to improve code quality which is a hint for spotting junior developers.
A real senior developer should detect when the garbage is piling up and fix it. Even if management does not want to allocate time doing refactor. I would prefer to get fire for doing the correct things than blindly accepting all requests from management pretending that our codebase is healthy.
The rule of the boy scouts is: “Always leave the campground cleaner than you found it”.
Be a boy scout like Bob Martin
It is our code base, even tough we inherieted it
This is absolutely true. I just feel utils or shared code is a particular flavour of garbage I feel people are often blind to, or unaware of.
Good luck with that if you have a family.
Be real, sometimes you will have time and sometimes no.
Part of the seniority is based on social skills that will convince management.
That is our duty as professionals. The best programmer I've ever worked with once told me every time product/management/client is taking the wrong decision and you let that happen, you are failing as a professional programmer.
Many colleagues do not think in this way but we should start to see this like a patient saying to the doctor they do not want this or that treatment because they do not like it. It is our responsibility to inform the people that pay our checks that they are going against their self-interests.
I think it's a nice ideal.
In practice, though, sometimes it takes too much time to achieve this.
Sometimes it's a battle that can't be won.
Sometimes you need the job more than you need to fight this fight.
And also, some people don't like having these kinds of conversations too, and that's fine.