The Right Thing

Tagged as personal, programming

Written on 2015-05-09 03:35:00

I've been programming for 8 years now. Only half that time professionally. It seems like a long time to me but is a drop in the bucket compared to many in this industry.

If I had to pick two big lessons from the past 8 years to tell someone getting into Software Development for the first time, I would probably say:

1. Software is never finished.
2. Software is never "right".

Software is Never Finished

Software is never finished because it exists in a social context. Software is an accessory to daily life and life changes. As our needs evolve, and the context around software shifts, so must the software itself.

Not to mention the fact that the teams working on software and the organizations around it shift. We cannot forget Conway's Law!

I often cannot imagine how the Software industry will ever settle with regards to tools and practices, when I see our tumultuous past 50 years. But even if our techniques and tools settle, I don't imagine our codebases will.

Software is Never "Right"

You might imagine that this section is redundant. Certainly it sounds similar to "Software is Never Finished". But I mean something different. I mean that there isn't a single right way that all software should be written or made.

The internet would lead you to believe otherwise. Programmers are nothing if not evangelists, even zealots, about their tools and techniques, their pet styles and practices, their esoterica.

The most important thing you can do is ignore this. Ignore the hate, Ignore the hype. Do not second guess yourself.

Tools, practices, and domains of knowledge are just that. Even if Software wasn't a moving target (see: Never Finished), we still do not have a single methodology understood to always produce the ideal code. Indeed, there isn't some ideal code we're after. The code is not the most important part, it's just the part we're paid to obsess over.

So don't sweat the folks who insist everyone should follow their "better" way. At the end of the day, good documentation and happy customers are probably more important than most particulars of your codebase.

By all means, don't stop learning and write the best code you can. But chart your own path through our tangled maze of lore. And remind yourself that it's okay to be an average programmer. We've got to find time for families and lives, after all. Speaking of which ...

The Right Thing

It's tough to try to plan for retirement. I'm still too young to think confidently on decade plus time scales.

It's tough to decide how to teach my students and gauge assignments. It's tough to decide what to learn next to become better at programming. It's tough to decide what I want from my career, how to nourish it and have it nourish me. It's tough to decide what's worth doing in general, when our lives are so busy and full.

But there's one decision I make that's really easy, even when it makes my life harder.

It's coming up on six years since Dad died. I cannot measure the amount I've grown since then. I know he'd be proud. But I'm proud and that's even more important. The biggest lesson I learned from John Glenn is probably this:

Loving other people is so obviously the right thing.

I cannot think of a time when I am as confident in my decisions as when I am loving and supporting others.

I'm not proud of my programming skills or code, though cl-6502 is kind of neat. I'm not proud of my job or relationship, though I am thrilled with those aspects of my life.

I'm proud that I handle hard situations with all the grace I am able. I'm proud that I treat others with respect and care because I didn't used to.

Most importantly, I'm proud that when I see someone struggling, I love them.

We do not get to have many easy decisions in our adult lives. But loving those around us, pleasant or unpleasant, in good times or bad is an enormous undertaking. I certainly fail at it, but I never regret it.

It's unfortunate that with our busy lives, in the sea of our alerts and notifications, it is so difficult to focus on the simple and important things. But I truly believe loving others is the most important thing that I do.

I have failed many times before and in many ways and modalities. I have character flaws. I have shortcomings. But if I have helped those around me through difficult periods in their lives and supported them when they were in need? Well, then it's all probably worth it.

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