The famous quote goes:

Success is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.

I’m going to paraphrase it as:

Software development is 10 percent programming and 90 percent perspiration.

Consider the cost of a single if that introduces some new feature (e.g. a new flag):

1. Write the if and the new branch.
2. Write the comment on the reasoning (right?)
3. Possibly add a metric to know how often the new branch it’s used.
4. Write the unit tests for the other branch (of course!)
5. Write the integration test (and then run the tests - I pity you already!)
6. Pay attention to security of the new feature (I’m beyond pity)
7. Write user facing documentation (you have those, don’t you?)
8. Deploy the component, deploy the documentation.

This is why software development is so much more than programming. I love both but as you move down the stack - into platforms or infrastructures - there is more and more work around less and less programming.

Last modified on 2021-05-07