My Code is Not My Kid
And you can say whatever you want about it
I don’t have kids, so I don’t know how I would feel if people start to criticize them or maybe say that they don’t belong. But I can only imagine that is not a good feeling. To put someone out there and see how mean the world can be with them.
I remember my mother saying: “People can say whatever they want about me, but never do it about my kids”.
The heartless driven development
As a developer, I have no feelings about the code I write.
Let me explain.
Yes, I do like my code. I’m even proud of it now and then. It’s funny because I make and send it to the world thinking I did my best, given the resources I had at my disposal.
Isn’t like that? Sometimes we believe there is no other way to make it better. That is beautiful, clever, solves problems and there is nothing wrong with it.
Until someone says it is hard to understand, does not follow the standards and breaks stuff. So we go mad, we can’t deal with others’ disapproval on our “perfect child”.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
We write clean and understandable code for others to read. Hoping they can later extend it, or even better, easily delete it when needed. So why get angry when people find it confusing?
I learned that by accepting criticism on my code, instead of making excuses, I can better understand other points of view. It might seem careless but it is the opposite. The more I am open to receive feedback about my code, the more I benefit from it.
I am not saying I just accept anything without questioning. What I am saying is don’t take it personally. Then when is your turn to evaluate someone else’s code, you will stop criticizing without offering a good suggestion on how to improve it.
During my career, I saw many people acting like their codes were their kids. Being really defensive when someone says there is a better way to do what they’ve done. It usually comes with some excuses like: “It solves the problem”.
But we don’t want just to solve problems. We want to solve them and not create more problems along the way. We want to create software that is easy to live with.
The only way I’ve found to make people not take it too personally is to do exactly the same. Try it! You’ll start to create an environment where the goal is to improve always.
I will continue to be proud of the code I write. But I will remain open to hear what others have to say about it.
Thanks for reading!
