While everyone and their aunt talks about things developers dig, what coders love to create and so on, we are surprised how nobody is talking about what developers love to hate, the coding horrors that give them nightmares.
With a team of sharp web developers working on some of the best websites designed and developed in Ahmedabad India, we have learnt at close quarters about the many things that keep our talented techies up at night, things they dread. And they are…
1. Fixing someone else’s bad code and bugs
The one thing that every developer fears while joining a new company, is the cleanup job of any project developed by someone else. Developers hate touching someone else’s code. And it’s a horror story if the code they’re working on is lengthy, unreadable, complex, riddled with bugs and LIVE.
Wondering why this happens so often? That’s because developers, just like writers and painters, have their own style of coding. A good developer will always document his/her code, to ensure the sanity of anyone who might have to work on their code in future. Yes, this includes themselves too.
Of course documentation is a painful process and it’s the second most hated thing for most developers, but without it, any new developer will have to scour through thousands of lines of the original code to figure out what the former developer was thinking. And trust us, it is a NIGHTMARE!
2. This, that, everything is a top priority!
Three developers walk into a bar, they start discussing their priority tasks and bugs. The bartender chipped in, “I KNOW, RIGHT… THAT’S WHY I CHOSE BARTENDING OVER CODING!”
Developers absolutely hate it when their project managers come up to them and keep adding new “top-priority” tasks on their plate and still expect them to complete all the previously ongoing ones at the end of the day.Prioritizing means ranking tasks on the basis of its importance and urgency. It’s not rocket science for anyone to not get it. Of the many developers we have worked with while offering website development and web design services in Ahmedabad, most of us have recalled of instances where they have been expected to work on two projects in parallel or multitask because Task A and Task B both are ‘Top Priority’
Surprise, surprise, that’s not how it is supposed to work! It’s just a pure case of bad management and project heads and team leads cannot blame their developers for their poor estimation of deadlines.
3. Meetings, a lot of them!
THIS MEETING COULD HAVE BEEN AN EMAIL!
Developers absolutely hate it when they are pulled into “quick meetings” that last close to an hour and have no clear objective or agenda. This causes interruptions in the flow of their work and forces them to clock extra hours in the office to finish their work for their “Top Priority” projects.
Badly run meetings or “brainstorming sessions” can end up wasting the developer’s valuable working hours and break their flow of thought, which then leads to difficulty in getting back into the zone to write code.
So, the next time a developer says he/she is looking forward to the weekend, they aren’t making plans to hang out with friends, relax or go on a date (hope we didn’t touch a nerve there), but to finish their pending tasks with focus and in absolute isolation (okay, that’s the last one, we promise).
4. Just one more thing
Office Space came close, but we’re actually surprised why Hollywood or Bollywood hasn’t made a movie on a developer who goes on a rampage after his/her project manager came up to the desk and said “Hey, one more thing..” and added another new, difficult task on their plate.
Yes, we know that priorities change during the course of the day and not every task list can be followed to the T in website development and design. But it makes the life of a developer easier if the smaller things in web design can be planned before the actual development begins. We’re talking about the last minute, unclear requirements that crop up once the demo is ready.
Too many last minute additions and that “Just One More Thing” could wreck the code and further ruin the design philosophy of the entire product. One product cannot please all!
5. People seeking “tech co-founders”
Ever wondered what do developers talk about and laugh out loud with their other developer buddies during lunch break or around the water cooler? It’s the number of times they have been asked to join hands with their ‘non-developer’ friends as the “Tech Co-Founders” for their “Path-breaking Digital Solutions” company.
No, we haven’t lifted a scene straight out of The Big Bang Theory (Remember Jimmy Speckman and his great 3D glasses idea?). Developers absolutely hate it when their friends and families expect them to build products and softwares that fulfill their wild fantasies, and further accept the fancy titles given to them for being the “co-founder” of the startup.
Ever wondered why? Because people who approach developers to join their start-ups as their tech co-founders have absolutely no idea how web development works and they are the ones who have watched “The Social Network” and got inspired to create the next big tech idea.
And no, this wasn’t a rant by our tech lead, but just an ode to all the talented and hardworking developers around the world who have worked with us and are working with many other companies, having developed some of the best products. We hear you guys, and you all are awesome! And oh btw, in case you were looking for a web design company to work with in Ahmedabad that just gets it, you know who to contact 🙂
The founder and partner of Flora Fountain, Shefali leads the Content and Technology divisions. A one-time engineer who started her career writing front-end code, she took a detour sometime during her 9 years in New York, studied journalism and started writing prose, poetry and sometimes jokes. She now has 15...
