Note #26
20 Things I’ve Learned in my 20 Years as a Software Engineer by Justin Etheredge of Simple Thread made it to the top of Hacker News, and there were some interesting insights from the article.
There is no “right” architecture, you’ll never pay down all of your technical debt, you’ll never design the perfect interface, your tests will always be too slow. This isn’t an excuse to never make things better, but instead a way to give you perspective. Worry less about elegance and perfection; instead strive for continuous improvement and creating a livable system that your team enjoys working in and sustainably delivers value.
[Watch out for the 0.1x programmer] who wastes time, doesn’t ask for feedback, doesn’t test their code, doesn’t consider edge cases, etc… We should be far more concerned with keeping 0.1x programmers off our teams than finding the mythical 10x programmer.
If you are using your tools, and you don’t love or hate them in a myriad of ways, you need to experience more. You need to explore other languages, libraries, and paradigms. There are few ways of leveling up your skills faster than actively seeking out how others accomplish tasks with different tools and techniques than you do.
Good written communication is one of the most important skills for any software engineer to master.
The article is worth the read (warning: a few vulgarities).