The Pragmatic Craftsman :: Simplicity from complexity : by Stanley Kubasek ::

No matter who. No matter what. No matter when. Short term.Long term. Any term. Writing good code is ALWAYS faster than writing bad code. —Robert Martin (@UncleBob)

Is it because of pressure?

Is it because you want to be faster than others?

Or is it just because that’s the way you’ve been doing things and it has worked for you?

I hope it’s not the case. I hope you take the time to do it right. Because if not, as the saying goes, will you have the time to do it over? Or how will you look at it when you see the project codebase turning into spaghetti. Because it will.

I wish it was so clear cut. It’s usually not.

But I do believe in the theory of broken windows. One little “slack,” one not needed “if” statement starts this process. And then it goes downhill. It’s just a matter of time before somebody else puts another if. And another. Soon enough, you start searching where things have broken. It’s no longer easy to fix stuff. So you put another conditional.

That’s how things degenerate.

I’ve seen it many times in my career.

But I try to do it right. I think about consequences of my actions. Consequences of putting one line of code that will make things worse for others, worse for the codebase.

I take pride and always try to leave things in no worse condition when I found it. If I can, I try to make it better. I don’t always succeed. But I try to adjust. Learn. And always have “do it right” attitude. I think it matters.

If we had more people that cared about the quality, our dev world would be a better place.

Related
Write Your Good Code First – blog post by James Sugrue and Uncle Bob’s quote that I found there that gave me motivation to write this post.