Re:Rabbit Holes: The Secret to Technical Expertise
by jjeaff on Monday August 26, 2019 @01:13PM
(#20801650)
As someone coding for my own business, I often find myself deep down a rabbit hole and have to get out and force myself to just use that ugly patch.
It's a balancing act, because it hurts me to just leave something without completing it "the right way" but I have found that if I try to do everything "the right way", I would get so little done.
I try to keep this in mind when reviewing or working on other's code. Some things will anger me at first glance but the problem is, they were probably just prioritizing different things at the time than I would have prioritized right now.
Re:Rabbit Holes: The Secret to Technical Expertise
by la_barba on Monday August 26, 2019 @01:07PM
(#20801595)
Its not that people don't respect it, its that they don't appreciate it. And the reason they don't appreciate it is that those things are invisible to the end user.
How much extra money would you pay for an electrician or a mechanic who does the equivalent of what you're suggesting with code? 1.5x? 2x? Most people I know always complain that their garage overcharges them or that they got ripped off by some contractor or the other...
In my professional life I've run into a lot of people who will say "the idea is already there, it just needs to be coded up".
They will then come across common coding issues like keeping things in version control, adding tests, network config, and language specific things. They decide they don't have time for this particular rabbit hole, because of course they already know what they want.
The good people will over time end up investigating everything, even if it doesn't seem relevant to your LOB application. And they produce much better code because of it.