On coding, ego and attention
Yesterday, I caught myself mulling over an article on not taking my code too personally.
In short, the author argues that to become a better engineer, you must master detaching your ego from your work and focus your full attention on the task itself rather than on self-evaluation or the fear of failure.
I was struck by this. It seemed the author was speaking directly to me. I often find myself perfecting a piece of code that already works just because I want it to be perfect, but not for the usefulness of having perfect code, rather for a matter of "reputation". I want my code to be known as perfect, as the good example.
But as much as this commitment may be necessary at a certain level, this is a dangerous direction to venture into. I say this from experience. I often end up focusing on the wrong problems or giving too much weight to certain comments I receive.
It’s one of those things that is simple to understand but incredibly hard to do. Even when you know the "rules" for staying detached, your brain still defaults to taking the work personally.
I think it's also an effort that the community needs to make, because if so many people have the same problem (my assumption), maybe we should also ask ourselves some questions about the work culture we want to foster, and the expectations we want each others to meet.