Shipping Over Perfection

A few days ago, I watched a video: Why You SUCK At Programming by Anthony GG. He calls out the tech community’s obsession with things like naming conventions and perfect looking code.

What really matters, and what most developers forget is shipping. You can know all the right patterns and tools but if you never finish anything, you are not solving real problems.

That’s why shipping is important. Your software doesn’t need to be perfect; it should be good enough to address the problem, then you can improve it based on feedback. This cycle can help you to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Don’t waste time choosing the latest technology unless you really need to learn something new. Pick a technology that you know well. Ask yourself: Can this technology solve my problem? If yes, stick with it. Don’t switch it until you have finished.

Remember how you feel when you look at your code from six months ago? You might think, “Wow, that’s not good.” But that’s okay. It shows you are getting better. Your old code might look bad to you now, but it was your best at that time. This is how you learn and improve. It’s not about writing perfect code. It’s about evolving and making software that helps people.

When the right time comes and you really want to learn something new, you bring your knowledge with you. Nothing goes to trash when you switch things up. You will always build something with everything you have learned. If you are a PHP developer and suddenly you wanted to learn Go? All the backend knowledge is applicable to Go as well.