The holidays are coming 🎄
And between making pierogi 🥟 and baking gingerbread cookies, I felt like writing a post — because honestly, how long can you stand next to the stove? 😉
The longer I work in this industry, the more I feel we’re all basically the same. We struggle with similar problems, have similar thoughts, and make similar mistakes. Proof? This post of mine:
Nobody Writes Clean Code. We All Just Pretend
There wasn’t a single comment saying “that’s not true, our code is amazing!” 😄
So today I decided to go for a more humorous list — a collection of lies I think we all keep telling ourselves.
1. “This will only take a moment”
How many times have you said this after reading a task description?
And how many times did that “moment” turn into days of work because you discovered that 5 years ago, as a junior, you wrote a beautiful piece of spaghetti code in class X? 🍝
I try to automatically look for hidden traps these days, but I still fall for this one from time to time.
2. “I’ll refactor this later”
Suspiciously often, that later never comes 😉
Here’s a pro tip: creating a refactor task — even if it ends up buried at the very bottom of the backlog — dramatically increases the chances it’ll actually happen one day.
3. “We’ll definitely finish this by the end of the sprint”
Sure… if you forget to include twenty calls with another team and that one unexpected hotfix 🔥
If you can, always estimate with a buffer. In most projects, it’s better (in the PO’s eyes) to add work during a sprint than to not deliver what was planned — though, of course, it depends.
4. “I’ll write the tests later”
Same rule as with refactors: either you write them right away, or — if you really can’t — you create a task for them.
Otherwise… bye bye, tests 👋
5. “It’s just an edge case, no one will ever do that”
I don’t know how it is for you, but in my projects, if a bug can happen, at least a few users will always find their way there. Every. Single. Time. 😅
6. “This is definitely not on my side”
Impossible that it’s frontend/backend (cross out as needed).
Oh wait… you’re saying it is?
Oops. Yeah. Right. My bad.
7. “If it works on my machine, it’ll work everywhere”
Probably the most hated assumption by testers everywhere 🧪
And yet… we keep making it.
I’ll stop here, because I feel like I could keep going until tomorrow — and cakes won’t bake themselves 😉
Get ready for part two 😄
So… what are your biggest developer “lies”?
Let me know in the comments 👇
Top comments (3)
The daily grind of every developer, myself included! And if there are pierogies or gingerbread cookies… heaven can wait – so can testing and refactoring. My mouth is watering!
Maybe that's just human nature? So many manufacturers think the same way, whether it's cars, kitchen appliances, scissors...
I just read my entire programming life....