Code like Marco Baghdatis
In the recent Australian Open, Marco Baghdatis won plenty of hearts with his gutsy performance as a relative unknown to make it to the finals…and have a go at beating Roger Federor.
Marco impressed a lot of people both on and off the court and I think we can learn a few things from Marco in our parrallel universe of IT and software development.
1) Be courageous
Marco Baghdatis is one of the most courageous sportspeople that I’ve ever seen. Even under the enormous pressure of the finals of a grand slam tennis tournament, Marco still backed himself to make the hero shots when they mattered most.
As a software developer, sometimes you need to back yourself on the big calls. You need to believe that you can make something work, then just get in and do it. You need to trust that you will find a solution to any problems that you didn’t anticipate.
Being courageous is particularly necessary when you are refactoring or working on other people’s code. It’s all too easy to be scared about the consequences of modifying code that you aren’t familiar with. Sure, there’s a reason you’re scared, you could screw up really bad, but that’s the nature of courage. If you continue to take the soft option in this situation, you’ll end up with dirty, hacky code. (Oh and one more thing, remember the unit tests).
2) Be bloody good
There is no substitute for talent and hard work. Marco Baghdatis might be a relative unknown in the tennis world, but you can bet your bottom dollar that he has been perfecting his craft since he was knee high to a grasshopper.
If you want to be a great developer, you have to be smart, and you have to work hard. So many developers seem to learn a basic set of technologies and that’s it, forever. You have to keep learning outside your day job, and you have to keep probing the fringes of technology for new ways of doing things.
3) Don’t think you’re too good
I think perhaps one of the things that we all love about Marco Baghdatis is that he is refreshingly not-up-himself. Just because you are good at what you do doesn’t give you the right to be an arsehole.
Software developers are notorious for thinking we’re just a little bit too good. If you’re good, people already know it. You don’t need to act it. Who knows, maybe that silly user giving you grief on the end of the phone might be right?
4) Enjoy what you do
Marco Baghdatis enjoys himself. What’s the point of doing something if you don’t enjoy it? How do you expect be bloody good at what you do, if you don’t enjoy yourself?
Sometimes software development can be a thankless job, everyone wants more from you than you can possibly give, and everyone expects you to get it right first time every time.
Try to organise your work so you seperate the personalities and pressure from your coding. Use a bug tracker, use agile methodologies and communicate with your stakeholders face to face if you want to reduce the tension in your environment.
Finally, balance work and play….girls are fun too…just ask Marco…
