Achievement unlocked “Duct Tape Master”
Dear Reader,
As a programmer, you don’t have to always have the perfect answer, as long as you can get to a working answer.
Yes, Sometimes, the answer is a perfectly architected API, built on a beautiful framework. Sometimes you get to apply 10 different design patterns from Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
Most of the time though, your client needs something working…yesterday. Sometimes, all you’ve got time for is duct tapping a few Composer packages together to get something working.
Professional programmers can triage a situation and know when it calls for a properly designed architecture, and when it calls for a roll of duct tape. Sadly, way too many programmers never unlock the “Professional Programmer” badge, they stay at “Duck Tape Master” badge.
So I ask you, in your career, have you unlocked the “Professional Programmer” badge? or you still a “Duct Tape Master 10x”?
Until next time,
I <3 |<
=C=
Tags: going pro, programmer
January 15th, 2014 at 7:37 pm
RT @CalEvans: Achievement unlocked “Duct Tape Master”: http://t.co/jBr6i3xcjM
January 18th, 2014 at 3:07 pm
Resorting to duct tape is fine, as long as one of the following are true: (A) the project is near end of life, and/or no further major changes or new features are planned or expected in it’s life time, or (B) you have a plan for refactoring and coming up with a more permanent solution at some point; for example, you’re leaving TODO items in the code, clearly indicating where you taped things together.
If neither of those are true, you are just waiting for disaster – you can only duct tape for so long, before things start falling apart :-)