I Heard There Was Some Sacred Code
I once held the belief that there was a line of code out there that could save the world. This “sacred” code would be revered and elevated into textbooks for children to marvel. When I was maturing as a developer I began to imagine I could write this magical line of code. Every time I sat in front of my IDE to knock out a user story, I thought, “Maybe this it”…
I’d spent my time trying to nuance this sacred code into existence: a flourish here, an extrapolotion there. As I bashed keystrokes solving at least one thorny business problem per second, my confidence was astounding. This method would be copied by my peers for the next millenia!
But it was all spaghetti. Yes, it worked, but it was an unmaintainable crisis.
Reality
Now, as I’ve progressed deep in my developer career, the only sacred code is code that is well formatted, with no lintable issues, and with 100% test coverage. The time for nuance is over… I just write boring units of code that attract no suspicion.