15 proverbs for the mindful developer
Coding and programming, many developers will tell you, are a way of life as much as a job. So Antonin Januska began compiling the Programmer's Proverbs – a crowdsourced compilation of life lessons that lives, naturally, in a GitHub repository.
GCN's 15 favorites are listed below. Additions can be made, and the full list accessed via API, here.
- Deploying an unmonitored app is like going on a road trip without a gas gauge.
- More hours worked, more commits made. Mostly reverts and bug-causing features.
- Scope creep makes a mountain.
- Sometimes you have to cut legacy support to allow the new product to bloom.
- "Just ship" is no substitute for design.
- You cannot prevent managers from asking too much of you, but you can prevent them from getting used to it.
- Testing is easier than debugging.
- Laziness is your best friend. Never do twice what you can automate once.
- The better job you do, the easier others discount the level of difficulty.
- Any sufficiently complex app architecture is indistinguishable from spaghetti code.
- An early BETA launch will teach you more than a delayed promise.
- One thing should never do more than one thing.
- A marketer is not a QA, a developer does not advertise.
- Writing requirements-based code and walking on water are both relatively easy to do when frozen.
- Don't commit on master when drunk.
About the Author
Connect with the GCN staff on Twitter @GCNtech.