Recently, a friend joined me on one of my projects. As it was the first time we were actually coding on the same project I wanted to tell him my coding philosophy to make sure that he felt empowered, engaged and connected to the code.
Then I realised that despite the fact that a lot of programmers take the concept very seriously, very few actually put it down “on paper”; so I thought I would.
My Tenets of Coding and Code Ownership:
- Everyone owns all of it (even the bad parts)
- If you see something that is wrong, fix it
- If you see something that can be done better, change it
- If something takes more than a moment to understand, consider writing a comment for the next guy (even if that is you 2 months from now)
- Testing is a tool; use it as such.
- Enjoy naming things; variables, methods, objects, etc. They will love back if you love them enough to give them a good name.
- Programming is an art form; structures, processes, format, patterns, they are all parts of it. But creativity and problem solving is too.
- Fear is your worst enemy. Don’t be afraid to: make mistakes, change your mind, challenge, question or lead.
- Everyone owns all the code; It’s yours, own it, mould it, love it.
- Don’t be afraid to love it
