3 common mindsets I have seen (been) in the past 15 years of software development career
The Code is Dirty and My Hands are Clean!
When You Encounter:
- A function that doesn’t work well.
- A utility class that is difficult to use.
- A daunting bug is assigned on your first day, making you uncomfortable debugging in a “s**t mountain” of code.
Don’t:
- Rewrite the function from scratch.
- Leave it as is, copy most of the code, modify it, and create a new one with the same functionality that fits your use case.
- Refactor the ‘s**t mountain’ while fixing the bug, thinking you’ll find the bug in the process.
Do This Instead:
- Add optional parameters for your use case or use polymorphism by subclassing to derive the desired behavior.
- Write tests after making changes to ensure your modifications work as intended.
- Modify the class to fulfill your use case with minimal changes.
- Check existing logs to trace the issue. If there aren’t enough logs, add more trace points to aid in debugging.
- Solve the issue with minimal changes.
- Treat refactoring and bug fixing as separate processes; never combine them into one go.
