Becoming a Better Programmer

Chapter 15. Playing by the Rules

If I’d observed all the rules, I’d never have got anywhere.

Marilyn Monroe

We live our lives by many rules. This could be a dystopian Orwellian nightmare, but it’s not. Some rules are imposed on us. But some we set ourselves. These rules oil the cogs of our lives.

Rules facilitate our play, describing how a game works: saying who has won and how. They make our sports fair and enjoyable, and provide plenty of opportunity for (mis)interpretation (see soccer’s off-side rule).

They impinge on our travel, where security rules dictate you can only carry so much liquid, and no sharp objects, on airplanes. They describe traffic speed limits, and how to safely navigate a path on the road. Such rules ensure the safety of all.

Rules bound our social norms, stating that it’s not appropriate to lick a stranger’s ear when you first meet them, no matter how tasty it looks.

Yes, we live our lives continually observing a set of rules. We’re so used to this that we often don’t think about them.

Unsurprisingly, the same holds in our development work. There are a wide range of rules we follow at the codeface. Development process norms. Mandated toolchains and workflows. Office etiquette. Language syntax. Design patterns. These are the things that define what it is to be a professional programmer, and the way we play the development game with other people.

If you ...