A senior dev at a meetup in Denver told me I was overthinking my code structure

I was at this coding meetup at a brewery downtown last Tuesday. Some guy with 20 years experience glanced at my side project and said I was trying too hard to make it perfect. He point blank told me to just write messy code and fix it later. Honestly it clicked for me in a way tutorials never did. Has anyone else had a random stranger call them out and it actually helped?

3 comments

3 Comments

stellachen1mo ago

Maybe it's just me but the "write messy code and fix it later" thing only works if you actually come back and fix it. Most people I know just pile on more messy code on top.

webb.ben1mo ago

400 lines of "temporary" code later and suddenly the whole thing is held together with duct tape and hope. @stellachen hit it right, fixing it later always seems to mean "when the project gets rewritten in 2028." Maybe it's just me but I think half of us are just building increasingly elaborate Jenga towers.

chen.adam12d ago

Man my last project had a "temp fix" that was literally 3 if statements duct taped together. Six months later it was the core of the whole system. Nobody ever touches that stuff again.