"That'll do" won't do

Cheryl, and passing the bar
Cheryl has been a profound influence on the way that I conduct my professional life. She isn't a coder. She isn't even someone who you'd say had a high-powered job. She works at Liverpool University Guild of Students - in the shop during the day, and in the bar on weekend nights. This is where we met.

I worked at the Guild of Students for around six years. I kept the job up long after I'd graduated and found proper employment. Cheryl was my supervisor in the downstairs bars. During my first year of working there, I was haphazard with certain tasks - putting beer bottles on the shelf, for instance. The bars we worked on looked like a piece of shit. The students were snapping them up in droves. The average life expectancy of a bottle of the proto-alcopop Hooch was about three minutes. My particular crime was failing to ensure that the labels on the bottles faced front. The reprimand came swiftly.

That'll do won't do.

Cheryl, said - before straightening all the bottles herself.

I thought it pedantic at the time, but came to realise that the pursuit of excellence, in any field, is always worth striving for. In a busy bar when you're grasping for things like an over-stressed octopus, the last thing you need is to have to twist several bottles just to fulfil an order.

Programming principles

I was cured of such cavalier approaches very quickly, and have taken Cheryl's words into my software development career. Some readers will have heard them come from my own mouth on more than one occasion. My utterance of the phrase is not an attempt to pay something forward. It's my solid belief that if you are capable of doing a job well, you should do it.

You'd think that programmers, having trained for several years to do what they do, wouldn't need telling. The reality is somewhat different. Generally, there is a profound lack of love for the things that we do, and it needs to change.

Let's cut to the chase. Programmers are paid to come into work and solve puzzles.

It is a great job by default, a fantastic one if you're into it. If the solution of puzzles is not your thing, do not apply.

Too many coders cut corners. Too many coders bow to pressure and come up with a "quick fix". Too many coders come up with a "quick fix" to fix the "quick fix". Once you enter that domain, you're into a world of pain.

Pressure is a bitch, but one we can tame. Most of us have run into the situation where a client or stakeholder assumes that "just because we can conceive it, it must be possible", and you know what?

It probably is.

That doesn't mean you should sacrifice decent Software Engineering principles to achieve it. If your "quick fix" will cause more trouble than relief, more maintenance than instant satiation or more workarounds than can be easily documented, fall upon Cheryl's advice.

That'll do wont do

You won't go far wrong.