Practical Pessimism In Software Engineering
A guide to achieving enlightenment in software engineering through always considering the worst case scenario.
When approaching, and dealing with, the different facets of life as a progressive software engineer one of the most important things is to remain utterly pessimistic with respect to every day life in the grand game.
You see, it doesn’t do to be overly optimistic, it doesn’t even do to be normally optimistic¹, and very often it’s extremely inappropriate to be even slightly optimistic when faced with those day-to-day challenges that you’ll regularly come across as you play your moves, squash bugs, and avoid all sorts of tortuous meetings by hiding in someone else’s cube, chat room, or ‘metaverse’.
Here follows my own somewhat frivolous² yet honest summary of some of the more common scenarios in which you, an aspiring and hopeful software engineer, may find yourself and some tips as to how to deal with them without losing your marbles in the process.
Call it Stoic, call it forced pessimism, call it looking on the dark side but you know yourself that going in optimistically is always going to leave you disappointed.
“Man is affected not by events but by the view he takes of them”
