Matthew Davies Discussed Mistakes Every Software Engineer Has Made

Posted by Sandy on November 15th, 2019

Introduction

Matthew Davies believes that software applications can be considered to be an art form. It lets you express your analytical thinking and bring anything from practical and disrupting business improvements to wild and innovative games to life. Like all artists, software engineers are also found in all shapes, sizes, and individual quirks that make their code unique. But it doesn’t come without costs either. So, here are a few of the mistakes that are committed by most of these technical artists every day.

The Mistakes

1. The Elite Trap - Writing code helps you to innovate and find new solutions to problems so that you can implement them better in the future for a significant gain in runtime or reducing the usage of resources. It also comes with bragging rights and sometimes can be like an addictive drug that you can’t get enough of. After all, who doesn’t want to be the “elite” developer, right?

But if there is no need for “clever code”, it just makes the job of your teammates harder. No one wants to solve unnecessary riddles that eat up into their productivity. Be kind to your fellow developers and try to write code that is concise and clearly understandable by your peers.

2. Communication is key - You might be confident in your skills, but without proper communication, you won’t be able to gain new insights or ace the next interview for a hike in pay. When you communicate properly with a friend or colleague, you can enhance your technical expertise and grow even more.

For instance, algorithms are like roleplaying games that can bring you to the same results by taking different routes. With proper communication and discussion, you would be able to make yourself aware of new pathways and even compromises between various data structures.

3. Nothing is foolproof, especially software - While writing code for personal use or at your workplace, it is vital to make your posts go through the baptism of testing. Related to testing there are four major scenarios that include:

• The Happy path where user actions and other operations lead to the perfect execution of your code as designed
• The unhappy path where anything from errors to hardware failures can deviate you from the happy path
• Formal testing done by QA engineers, developers or anyone else who hasn’t written the code
• Developer testing that is done by you in preparation for the formal testing

So, thorough testing needs to be done even if your code goes through the happy path

4. Take care of your body - Your body is indispensable and needs to be kept in top condition so that you can maintain productivity and stay healthy. When you're sitting in front of the computer throughout the day, ignoring the body can be a common mistake that most software engineers can make. But if your immune system gets weak or obesity catches up to those pizza breaks you won’t be able to enjoy life or write code with efficiency.

Conclusion

Software engineering is one of the toughest careers and demands a lot of grinding. According to Matthew Davies, it can be easy to lose focus and make mistakes. But hopefully, the next time you will take more caution and prevent yourself from committing any of the mistakes mentioned above.