Making good software is making it correct, fast, and small; the last two can be swapped depending on the constraints.
It shows love — for the craft of making software, for the people who would use the software, for the environment, even.
There are two overlooked aspects of writing good software:
- Every time you do it, it becomes easier to do it again. Knowledge compounds, techniques compound.
- It’s not only your tool on the computer; you’re enabling the aggregate of software participating in people’s everyday lives to provide a great experience.
So go out there and change the world: spend some time making your software better. It doesn’t need to be a lot of time, because it compounds; but the more you love software and how it shapes life, the more you value the privilege of creating machines out of the ether of ideas that make the impossible possible for our fellow humans… the more you’ll enjoy it, the more you’ll do it.
I wrote this because I read [https://tonsky.me/blog/disenchantment/] and got tired of rising the stakes on myself again. So here we are – low stakes brain dump.
Writing good software is a show of love.