Excellence is a habit
Socrates is attributed with saying:
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is a habit."
If you ever have a desire to be great at anything then you must strive for excellence in every aspect and every detail. This is another way of saying "nail the details". They do matter.
The best software engineers I know "nail the details". They don’t let frivolous bugs slip past them or features to remain incomplete.
They don’t get compilation errors because they catch any syntax mistakes as they are typing the code. They rarely produce defects. These software engineers follow good basic practices, like after using the new operator they immediately place the corresponding delete; or they initialize variables immediately after declaring them. They remain disciplined in their approach. These are basic things, but they are details, and details matter.
To them, code isn’t to be taken lightly. The strive for perfection, for excellence, is not a sometimes thing, but an all the time thing. In fact, every line of code has its purpose, and if it doesn’t have a purpose then it is removed.
Nailing the details on an all the time basis is a difficult thing to do, but not impossible. The more you do it, the closer to great you become.
Filed under: Development
