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I Code for Others

From "Buddhist thought of the day" comes this quote:

When you give a shilling to a beggar - do you realize that you are giving it to yourself? When you help a lame dog over a stile - do you realize that you yourself are being helped? When you kick a man when he is down - do you realize that you are kicking yourself? Give him another kick - if you deserve it! - Why Lazurus Laughed by Wei Wu Wei...


My variation of this theme (because I'm a simple person) is this:


  • Code spends most of it's life being enhanced and maintained by developers other that the original creator.  It should be clear.
  • If it's hard to understand by the next programmer, they are more likely to re-design / re-write it and create new and different bugs.
  • Don't try to show others how smart you are, just make their (and your) life easier.  You will gain new friends and like yourself better.
  • Try to separate the what needs to be done from how it's being done.  This is a defining pillar of OOD.
I like to live on both sides of the development fence, the origination of new code and the maintenance of existing code.  I get to see how other developers think and what make a specific design or section of code easy to understand and maintain.   When it's easy to understand and maintain life is good and enhancement are easy, and when it's bad it's really bad.


The mind set for developer varies so widely that you can not classify how people think, you can only describe how you think.

Next Time : What's in my Thinking Toolbox.

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