“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”
— Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Since the moment that it first came out, I was a big fan of Steve McConnell‘s Code Complete. The idea that there was a right way and a wrong way to code things made perfect sense to my binary-centric way of looking at the world. Clean, precise, elegant, and efficient code is admirable goal, and it’s right up there near the top of my list of things for which I should always strive.
But it’s not at the very top.
Like Abraham Maslow‘s Hierarchy of Needs, some things are just more equal than others. My #1 requirement of my code is, was, and always will be passing this simple test: Does it work? Once we clear that threshold, we can make it pretty. We can make it clean. We can make it efficient. We can even make it elegant and stylish and amazingly beautiful. But only if it works. I’m not ashamed of my ugly code that does what it was intended to do, but I’m quite embarrassed of my luxuriously styled simple and elegant routines that fail that most important characteristic of them all. If it doesn’t work, none of the rest matters at all.
Coding to me has always been an iterative process. I’m drawn to the things that I’ve never done before, so I seem to always be staking out new territory and getting involved with things that I know little about. I try things. Most of these initial efforts tend to end in spectacular failure, but then I try something else. I’m constantly searching for that thing that works. Once I clear that bar, then I start asking if there are ways in which it could be done better. But if, and only if, I can first discover what works.
Hopefully, the things that I end up posting out here made it out here because they work. There may be a better way to have done it, or a more efficient approach to the problem, and I’m definitely always on the look-out for those, but it better work. If it doesn’t work, I would definitely like to know about it. I love to make things better, faster, cheaper, and oh so beautiful, so I am always open to hearing those ideas as well. But the number one test will always be that same old simple question: Does it work?
