Earlier this week, a fellow WordPress programmer whom I respect (and who is doing amazing things with his Aesop Story Engine) shared the following tweet:

cheers to the nitpickers.

because it matters what’s on the side you don’t see.

— Nick Haskins (@nphaskins) July 31, 2014

Truth be told, I wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or not. This isn’t his fault, of course, but my own ability to discerns, y’know, tweets. So I did what anyone would do in that situation: I asked him if he was being sarcastic or not to which he replied:

nope no sarcasm there. the nitpickers provide amazing value

And he’s right.

Someone is going to be nitpicking your source code.

This post is not about my opinions or observations as to how we tear one another down online under the guise of trying to help one another (that’s another post for another time), but it’s about the idea for which I completely agree (and that’s mentioned in the tweet above):

because it matters what’s on the side you don’t see.

Because I believe it does, and because I think that a number of people are sloppy. There’s a just get it working mindset, and I’d love to see more people take pride in their work and stop shipping code that has the same amount of details “on the side you don’t see” as on the side that you do see.

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One tensions that I’m not sure every goes away for programmers is that of “Am I learning enough?” If it does, I’d like to know when so I can prepare myself :).

Here’s the thing: Technology, and programming specifically, move really fast and there’s a lot not only to keep up with, but to be aware of on a week-to-week basis. Notice that I did not say that there’s a lot of to learn on a week-to-week basis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52UxIgsC_0g

Very, very early in my career I used to feel as if I needed to keep up with every single new programming language and/or related technology in the software world as it releases.

Talk about a fools errand.

Even as I began working with what is now known as Pressware, I was focusing both on Ruby on Rails and WordPress at the same time. Then something changed: I dropped Ruby on Rails (not because I dislike it – critiques aside, I actually am a big fan of Ruby and what the Rails framework offers), but because I began to think:

“If I dedicated my time to one area rather than splitting it into two areas, could I be a better asset to those whom I’m tying to serve?”

But this question can be generalized even further because our culture releases tons of new stuff every single day, and there’s an implied level of “you should learn this” that comes along with it.

And if there’s not, then either I’m misunderstanding the plethora of comments, blog posts, and other pressures induced by the Internet.

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