Assume the Person Before You Had a Reason

You open the file.

Whatever is in there
looks insane.

The first feeling is easy.

Contempt is cheap
and it arrives fast.

Hold it for a second.

Somebody wrote this,
on a Wednesday,
with less than you have now.

Less time.
Less context.
A deadline you never had to meet
because it was not yours.

They were not stupid.

They were early.

That is the difference
almost nobody accounts for.

You are reading the result
with the answer in your hand.

They were writing it
in the dark.

The strange condition
in the middle of the function
is probably not confusion.

It is a scar.

Something happened once,
at night,
to a real customer,

and that line is what stopped it.

Delete it
and you will find out what.

So ask before you judge.

Why would a reasonable person
do this?

If you cannot answer,
you do not understand the code yet.

You only dislike it.

From the inside
those feel identical,

and they are not the same thing.

This is not about being nice.

It is about being accurate.

Contempt makes you a worse reader.
You stop looking for the reason
the moment you decide
there is not one.

And then you take down the fence
in the middle of the field
without asking
what it was keeping out.

There is a version of this
that has nothing to do with code.

Every person you find baffling
is running on information
you do not have,

in a week
you know nothing about.

There is a selfish half to this.

Somebody will open your work
in three years,
with better tools,
more context,
and no memory
of the pressure you were under.

They will think exactly this
about you.

You would like them
to pause first.

So pause first.

Assume a reason.

Go looking for it.

Then change it
with the confidence
of someone who actually knows
what they are changing.

– Serguey Asael Shinder