Overheard a senior dev say something obvious that totally clicked

I was at a coffee shop near my office in Chicago last Tuesday and overheard a senior dev telling a junior that 'bad code is easier to fix than no code.' I'd been stuck on a feature for 3 days because I kept overthinking the perfect approach. Finally just wrote something messy and refactored it after, took like 2 hours total. Anyone else struggle with trying to make everything perfect on the first pass?

2 comments

2 Comments

james6727d ago

Used to think writing clean code first was the whole point. That changed everything.

valwest6d ago

Man I spent a whole week once trying to write the "perfect" login system and ended up deleting everything and starting over with a mess of if statements that somehow worked. The worst part was showing it to my boss like "look I fixed it" when really I just gave up on being a genius and typed whatever came to mind first. That coffee shop wisdom is like the programming equivalent of "done is better than perfect" except way more humbling because it means all those nights I spent staring at a blank screen were totally avoidable. Now my code looks like a toddler drew it with crayons but at least it ships.