! Not the lazy programmer

There’s been a popular stereotype about good programmers being productively lazy. Automating tasks to avoid work. It’s an easy thing to share but I don’t think it’s quite true. It’s about reducing inefficiency.

It’s not that developers don’t want to work, we want to do interesting work. Not repetitive work, not work that gets binned, not work to make life miserable for ourselves or others, and not work that can be done easier, cheaper and faster in a different way.

At it’s heart, software is a process that turns data, sometimes with human input, into other data, and sometimes into information and insight. Great developers understand processes, sub-processes and the connections between them, and inefficiencies smell. They distract, like a stone in the shoe, or a dam in the river. Sometimes we can quickly throw out the stone and run faster. Sometimes it takes years of rubbing away, fighting the blockages, until the path is clear.

Sometimes we shave yaks (and btw, check out that gif), Not because we’re too lazy to climb the mountain, but because we know we’ll have a better chance of getting there with a warm coat and a good plan.

Don’t be lazy. Be efficient. Be effective. And route around or remove any blockages in the way.