Web Development Blog

A list of things which make a good and sensible programmer (software engineer, developer).

1. Share everything.

Use open source where possible, and contribute to it when you are able. The collective wisdom of the entire community is better than the limited vision of a few large companies.

2. Play fair.

Give other technologies, frameworks, methodologies and opinions a chance. Don’t think your choices are the only ones that work. The other choices may very well be better than yours; it doesn’t hurt to check them out with an open mind.

3. Don’t hit people.

Like #2, don’t attack people just because they happen to use .Net or Java or PHP (I learned my lesson there!). Sometimes they might be more usable and useful than you think. You can learn a lot more from someone when you are not pounding them to a pulp.

4. Clean up your own mess.

Strive to deliver code that works. Never expect QA to find all of your bugs for you. Test your code often, both narrowly and broadly.

5. Don’t take things that aren’t yours.

Follow the licenses for stuff you use, don’t just steal it and claim innocence later.

6. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

Code reviews are a good but rarely used idea. Mentoring programmers with less experience than you helps the entire team. Just don’t criticize people openly. Learning is not belittling people. Sometimes people will listen and sometimes they won’t. Sometimes you might learn a lot from people you think are inferior to you.

7. Wash your hands before you eat.

Try to understand things before you set out to write code. Do prototyping, check out examples on the web, talk with other folks who do it, or even just play around. Architecting something you’ve never done before or worked with is tough cold turkey. The end result will work much better if you start with a clue.

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