Old Programs and Children

I used to believe, when I was younger, that the programs that I wrote would last forever.  They were well written (of course), full of useful functionality (of course) and they could adapt to anything (of course).  Wow, was I disillusioned in a hurry. 

It wasn't that they weren't well written.  I got a phone call from a company, six months after I left it, and it was one of the developers calling me up to thank me for having written the program and the exception handling in such a way that he was able to solve a problem in five minutes instead of the five hours he was expecting.  I was thrilled with that comment.  It was only after I hung up that I realized that it shouldn't have died in the first place, because I could have written it differently so that the information it was looking for could have been found in a more dynamic location.

When we are writing our little part of the overall project, or perhaps we are writing the entire application, we become quite protective of our child.  Anyone that criticizes our application is not worthy of further attention from us.  We close our eyes and forget the flaws of our child and emphasize the good points.  That's not to say that there aren't flaws, but we are so caught up in the entire development of this application that we are sometimes blind to it's faults.  This is not a bad thing!!!!  This bond that a developer forms with the application makes them want to do a better job and makes them want to ensure that everything is done right.

What we, as developers, need to do, however, is step back from being a parent and objectively listen to other peoples comments.  This is probably the hardest thing to do for a real parent and it is no less difficult for you and your virtual child, but it needs to be done.  No one's application is perfect and being able to understand that a critique of your application is not a critique of you as a person is a vital step in being able to be passionate about your work, but realistic about it flaws and weaknesses.  Your virtual children will be better for the effort... I guarantee it.