Accidental Cowboy
Mobile Makers Week 7.7 — MVC and dynamics
The other day, I realized that I was being a cowboy coder.
I heard the term earlier in a lecture and I think it means the guy who goes off and changes a bunch of items or creates code that affect others on the team without them knowing. Kind of like a rogue. Not the best sign of a a good developer.
In our current project (our 2.5 week insane timeline, self managed project), I was rushing to stitch stuff together. Meaning, getting a working model for demos on Thursday and just getting data to show up in the views. So, I would put in stubs that were direct calls to the back end and then switch them out with model calls. Not too bad, but I think I made a lot of calls. Whenever I was waiting for my partner to finish an API, I would just do direct calls, sometimes clearly marked, sometimes not, and I would mention it to him and also mention it in our stand ups. Near the end of this week, I was just doing direct calls. I was doing parsing of those direct calls, and not marking them as stubs, and most importantly, not taking the time to tell him. All in order to get something working. Time line ruled. Get shit working ruled.
Little did I know that this isn’t the best way to go about things. Architecturally, I was violating the MVC design, the one that my partner and I agreed to and have been working on for two weeks now. When he looked through the code, he was pissed. Like not-able-to-look-me-in-the-eye pissed. Like, avoiding-being-in-the-same-room-with-me pissed. It was weird, almost like a light switch, since we were always very jovial and really becoming friends.
It was nerve racking and uncomfortable. I really had no idea what was going on. It sucked. I hated it. I couldn’t concentrate on our app. I felt like quitting.
I finally was able to get it out of him via email that evening. I spent about probably hours, writing and rewriting email responses, thinking about responses, waiting for replies.
I apologized and tried to explain my thought process; and I think we are good now. I’m on the train into the city to work on the project with him right now. We only have 5 days left until the Demo Open House and we still have tons to do, so we’ll have to get through.
Lesson learned: in a team, communication rules.
