Dealing with pressure-hacks

Life is tough, and sometimes that forces us to make tough decisions. For developers under time and money pressure, that means occasionally writing code hacks that you’re not proud of.

I’ve met some developers who think that the only reason that hacks exist is because other people are dumb. Certainly many hacks are caused by ignorance, but many are also caused by unrealistic time, money, or features constraints that pressure someone into writing bad code. The critics seem to think that if only the world were as smart as them, then all code would be perfect – just like theirs (sarcasm). Ironically, these critics never seems to have had to dealt with the pressure themselves – they can tell you how you’re supposed to do it, or how their last company (that’s 10 times bigger) did it, or what the “Best Practices” are, but they don’t actually implement it themselves.

The best way I can think of to handle pressure-imposed-hacks is to:

1. Acknowledge that it is not ideal, and identify the problems.
2. Ask if others have a better idea (that can be implemented under the same pressue).
3. Document your hack, ideally in the source code or wherever else it matters.

The first step brings everyone to the same page. The second gets others’ feedback – maybe they know a helpful trick that will make everyone work. The third reaffirms to your fellow developers that while you’re aware that this isn’t ideal and you’re not trying to hide it, the code needs to be completed and this gets it done. These steps require humility and confidence from the coder: they admit what they don’t know something, but they can be confident that their approach at least solves the problem. Ultimately the company stays in business not by the critic who points fingers at everyone, but by the developer who makes the project work – even if it has an occasional hack.

Open question to readers - what do you think about hacks due to excessive pressure? Any interesting stories?

tags: style  

links: digg this    technorati