Overheard a senior dev say something that stuck with me

I was eavesdropping at a coffee shop and heard a guy say 'the first 100 lines of any codebase are the most expensive.' He meant fixing bad structure early saves hours later, not that you need perfect code. Anybody else notice how much time you waste untangling messy starter code?

3 comments

3 Comments

logan_anderson4012d ago

Have you ever had to completely rewrite something that looked fine on the surface but was secretly a disaster underneath? That 50 line bootstrap story is rough but honestly pretty common. I think people forget that "it works" and "it's good code" are two totally different things, especially in those first files where everyone is still figuring out the project. The problem is that bad early patterns spread like a cold through the rest of the codebase, and before you know it you're fixing the same mistake in ten different places. That's why I wish more seniors would push for a solid structure from line one, even if it means slowing down a bit on the first day.

kimr9112d ago

Man I gotta call this out a bit. You're right that early patterns can spread like a cold, but blaming juniors for those 50 line bootstrap disasters is missing the bigger picture. Most of the time those bad patterns start because the senior who set up the project didn't lay down clear rules from day one. The junior isn't the one choosing to rush through the first features without thinking about structure, that pressure comes from above. If anything, the real problem is that seniors let the first few files get written without any real review because "we'll fix it later." Later never comes and suddenly the whole thing is built on quicksand. So yeah slow down at the start but make sure that slowdown happens before anyone writes a single line of code.

pat_harris12d ago

Blew two whole days once untangling 50 lines of bootstrap code a junior wrote in an hour. Made me rethink how I review pull requests for new features.