I figured it out in another incidence. I was in my first year as programmer, and I believed I was a pretty good one.

I remember I was hanging around in a small computer book store, and there was a big book of 'code complete 2' there. I have totally no idea what's that, just opened it out of interest, and I remember I flipped to a chapter about how to write a good 'if else'. And I was like 'holy crap, I wasted my entire life, I never thought in that way, I must be the rookiest rookie in the entire programmer world'. I immediately purchased the book, and that indeed helped me a huge deal in the career.

Paraphrased famous CS quote from somewhere: "The sooner you acknowledge that you cannot fit the entire thing into your head, the sooner you can start factoring that acknowledgment into your design."

similarly: realise that i can only think about a small number of things at once. so try to structure things to separate concerns so that i get to avoid thinking about nearly all things when working on any given part of the system. a lot easier said than done.

> good type systems, immutability, compile type instead of runtime, never overwork and sleep the best I can

I agree with you on this.

> I started putting defense mechanisms everywhere

Just weeks ago, the software I had just finished writing complained to me at first run that I had forgotten to configure a setting. Defensive coding ftw.

> never overwork and sleep the best I can

Your best work can be done while not at your desk. Don't mind taking frequent breaks.

How did this work - genuinely curious? If you work as a team did everyone else stop being a cowboy too then pay down that tech debt? Or is this solo work or perpetual greenfield work?

It’s a bit more complicated than I made it look of course. My bit didn’t flip in a day and the reason why I changed my ways was also because I've worked with a few people that seemed to have figured this out already and just by observing them I could figure it out myself.

Nowadays it really depends, some people for sure get it more than others. Some just dismiss a lot of the safeguards I value as some kind of functional programming hype. Teams are hard :)