The 5 Surprising Lessons I Learned About Developing Software

Many of the things I thought I knew about writing software were not only wrong, but often the exact opposite of the truth.

The 5 Surprising Lessons I Learned About Developing Software

As a young developer, I was certain about several things.

I thought that writing code was the hardest part about being a software developer, that it didn't really matter what I named things, and that eking a few milliseconds of performance out of a procedure justified sacrificing readability.

It turns out I was wrong about all of those things.

Mike's Lessons Learned

  • It's harder to read code than to write it.
  • Writing code is the easiest part of developing software.
  • It requires more skill to maintain an existing application than to write one from scratch.
  • Readability trumps performance 99% of the time.
  • Naming is hard.

All original code samples by Mike Wolfe are licensed under CC BY 4.0