The Most Critical of All

January 9, 2020 • 10:18 AM

Some ideas I had while reading through what’s in Code Complete, pp. 115:

Collaboration can take any of several forms:

  • […] You don’t work with anyone who can review you work, so you do some initial work, put it into a drawer, and come back to it a week later. You will have forgotten enough that you should be able to give yourself a fairly good review.

Or let the code sit for a year or two. Then you look back and see how shitty the code looks and realize how much you’ve improved over that year or two. Or you find out that there’s nothing you want to change about your old code and that you’ve learned nothing in the same year or two.

The same idea applies across the board: when you look at the filtered photos you created a few years back and think “Why did I use such tasteless filter?” Or when you look back at your terrible app design and wonder “Why did I have this in the first place?” These are the moments you realize how much you’ve grown.

The best of all this? The 1-year-from-now you is the most honest and the most critical reviewer of your works. A close second is a-week-from-now you. Everyone else on the planet earth is far behind in the league.