this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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I've been tasked with updating some code a senior programmer (15+ years experience, internally awarded, widely considered fantastic) who recently left the company wrote.
It's supposed to be a REST service. None of the API endpoints obey restful principles, the controller layer houses all of the business logic, and repositories are all labeled as services--and that's before we even get into the code itself. Genuinely astounding what passes for senior-level programming expertise.
In many cases, getting something out quickly is more valuable than having it be clean.
Part of being a senior is knowing when fast is more important than perfect. Not saying your senior did everything right, just that a single example of someone's code isn't enough to judge the value of a person to an organization.
Ensuring all developers can continue putting out things quickly is equally (if not more) important.
Not always. It can be perfectly reasonable to implement something in a quick and dirty way to get it out there with a view to either kill it off (eg if it doesn’t get adopted by users) or re-write before it needs to be extended. The key is having the awareness when putting yourself in that position.