Hello again!
Today, I’d like to talk about how another set of eyes will also help.
If you’ve been writing code mainly by yourself, you may think that it’s good because it works!
Some day, you or another person will have to go back to the code that you’ve written before, and if that pile of beauty as you’d call it is good because you’re the only person who has written it, then you’ll probably end up in more serious troubles in the future.
You’ll be lucky if there’s another nice and serious developer who has had a lot of miles ahead of him and will help you to look at what you could’ve done better. This is also a part of their job in order to help you grow.
This is not to say that they don’t write code that is hard to understand. Everybody is human and nobody is perfect. Therefore, we can think of it this way in which a person writes an essay. The first draft is not perfect. The second draft is a little bit better. The third draft gets better than the second draft. The final draft is the best.
In code, drafts are like release versions of an application. The first release will almost always have something that sucks. This is why there are so many iterations of releases in all the software that we see, in which, there’s never a final draft. The problem is, with big software applications, there’s a high chance in which some code in there would be considered as spaghetti – this should just be a rough draft where refactors will be needed later on.
We’ve always been taught in college that when writing essays, they should be clear and concise. This is the same with any profession. Dancers should know their techniques well which will give them the correct posture to perform. Singers should know how their voices work so that their larynx will not hurt. Programmers must always try to make their code readable and understandable. All of the clarity and conciseness takes time and practice.
I do still find myself making things more complex than it needs to be along with others in the team that I work with. Having others catch them and then showing how they’ve simplified it definitely helps along the way.
And the last thing I’ll add is as long as you’ll be working well with others, you’ll find no problems at all.
Until next time!
Brian.