Programming Innocence

I have always been a "fearless" programmer, but never realized it until reading this post. Here's how:<p><i>Fear of not knowing the best way to do things (best practices).</i><p>The sooner you realize that there is <i>never</i> a best way of doing anything, the sooner you can release this silly fear. Some ways are better that others, but <i>any way</i> is better than <i>no way</i>. Just get the thing done. Later, when you refactor, you'll have the best of all worlds: code that did the job right away, a better way of doing things, a satisfied customer, and a great learning experience. Woo hoo!<p><i>Fear of not using the right tools and languages.</i><p>Give me an adjustable wrench, 2 screwdrivers, and a big hammer and I can fix just about anything. Same thing with programming. I'm too busy getting work done to learn every new tool or technique. As I've told many programmers over the years: "Whatever you can do, I can do in BASIC. Maybe not as pretty, but probably just as fast and just as effective."<p><i>Fear of errors (especially compiler errors).</i><p>You're in the wrong business. Errors are what point you in the right direction. The sooner you learn to embrace errors and use them to refine your work, the sooner you'll become fearless (and better).<p><i>Fear of schedules.</i><p>"I see only one move ahead, but it is always the correct one." - chess master Jose Raul Capablanca. That's what my schedule looks like. One item. One day. Project managers can't stand this, but then again, I get way more work done than they do.<p><i>Fear of publicity (what will other programmers think about this code?).</i><p>I never publish my code. Ever. Users get to give me feedback, but I don't give a shit what other programmers think. Sure, I learn from them, but <i>never</i> in the context of reviewing the code <i>I wrote</i>. I learn from the code of others and apply those lessons to my own work.

That's phase 2. Phase 3 is the middle way: be clever about balancing all those forces. Use the new library, but only if your gut feeling tells you that it's also the right choice for the future. Change the code without hesitation, but do hesitate if you think that it may cause more problems than it resolves. Etc.<p>Experience is a bitch. There are no blacks and whites, only a grey mess.

I think if you read a lot of programming forums, it's easy to confuse the fact that there are lots of people with highly specialized knowledge with the idea that everybody else knows more about everything than you do.

Actually, programming isn't the only thing with the innocence problem. I think he same thing happens with almost every creative work. From playing music to writing to designing sites, most have experienced similar feelings in other projects. The only solution is to Press on, keep working, and realize that your only way to create great stuff is to keep creating. That's what I keep having to tell myself lately.<p>Press on ... Don't give up! And try to keep the innocent excitement as long as possible ;)

At first, I though "Man, this sounds like a recipe for technical debt" but then I realized I'm guilty of exactly what you're talking about. In fact, I was browsing hacker news as a break from googling the best way to implement a feature that I could do in 10 minutes if I weren't concerned about having it perfect from the get-go.<p>I recently realized that I code slower than I used to. I assumed this was because I stopped hacking for a few years during law school, but now I think it has more to do with being immersed in a risk-averse perfectionist environment that leads to exactly the kind of timidity you're talking about. This may be one of the more valuable insights I've gotten from hacker news in a while. Thanks!

Just yesterday I was thinking about this issue. I think the article takes the biscuit.In my opinion, this is the main reason for why people who start out early are that good.<p>I partly relearned this skill when I started out with Taekwondo. Desperately, I was trying to memorize the motion sequences. Whenever I asked a question concerning which angle my right leg should have, which direction I should turn to ... the master would always say: "Don't think or talk. Watch &#38; do it!"<p>Surprisingly, you get a lot better in no time. Don't get me wrong I still suck but at least what I do now is worlds apart from my first humble attempts.<p>Now I think that I could become a decent programmer with a more child-like attitude (like the one I had when I discovered DOS &#38; Win 3.11 at the age of 5 - no adult taught me anything, I couldn't even understand the English menus ;-))<p>But unfortunately we get older. Whilst it is never too late to learn something for the joy of it I'd like to have a halfway-decent paid job within the next 10 years. At the moment I am 23. I could quit university, devote myself to open source software &#38; hack the hell out of the day. Hopefully, I'll someday know enough to have paid work. However, if I'd fail I wouldn't even have a degree &#38; my perspectives would be quite bleak. With that in mind programming is only a (way too little) hobby for me.

Very similar blog post: <a href="http://cam.ly/blog/2010/12/code-fearlessly/" rel="nofollow">http://cam.ly/blog/2010/12/code-fearlessly/</a> And associated HN chatter: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1964060" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1964060</a>

But what if my favorite way of hacking, what makes me feel amazing is something more like Rich Hickey's Hammock Driven Development (clojure.blip.tv/file/4457042/)?<p>Of course I don't get a chance to do this as much as I'd like at my day job. Still, some of my most satisfying programming experience has been when I've spent days researching and thinking about a problem, had a moment of enlightenment, and wrote 200 lines of beautifully simple code that strikes at the heart of the problem. <i>That</i> makes me feel like a programming god.<p>And I'd argue the result is somewhat better than "innocently" hammering out reams of code without taking time to really consider it.

The more I read about our profession in general, the more it seems to suck as you build a career / get in your thirties. I really hope it doesn't for me, because I'm not good at much else, lets see.

Your fear is only a result of your use of flawed languages, probably of the Algol family, rather using a flawless language like Lisp.

<i>Fear of errors (especially compiler errors)</i><p>That programmer should be really innocent. ;)