Stop reading blog articles like you do

Do you know this feeling? The feeling after reading a good blog article? It is like “OMG he is absolutely right!” or maybe more like “Why am I not working like this? It is so obvious now”. It doesn't matter if the article is about CSS, PHP, SCRUM or you name it. Just because of one article, we start questioning everything we do! An article from a normal person just like you or me. Someone who doesn't know your work or you. Someone who doesn't know your team or your clients. So someone who really doesn’t know anything about you. But still we immediately feel that the author is right and we are doing something wrong.

Simon says

I have had this feeling so many times. BEM is the only way to write good CSS. Don’t store date from within a controller, use the repository pattern. Use an interface too so you can switch out your ORM when you need to. You need to test to be good programmer, use PHPUnit, aehm Codeception, no Behat, I meant phpspec. But it all is careless if you do not follow the SOLID principles and do TDD, BDD und DDD of course. And by the way Mysql is old, PHP is slow and there are so many programmers out there that are half your age and double you skills, so it is better for you to stop programming!

We are all figuring this stuff out. Everybody! (Jeffrey Way)

I guess I have made my point. This is all because our industry can be so overwhelming. We all think that we are not good enough and that we need to learn more and more and more. Of course it is hard to stay up to date these days, but we are all figuring this stuff out. Everybody has been there and even people who have been working for more than ten years often feel that way. We need to start believing in our strengths and in our decisions. Don’t let others tell you what you should do.

You are not like Kent Beck

Everything is about scope! Next time you read an article keep that in mind. I am not saying that you cannot learn from other people’s experiences. You just need to stop reading like you did before. The author is always talking about his or her point of view. It may be similar to your’s but most of the times it is not. Even if you are reading an post from Robert C. Martin or Kent Beck. Of course these guys really know what they are talking about but again scope! I guess you are not working for Facebook? How many of us have similar jobs to them? Maybe 5% or less? I don’t need to think about all the SOLID principles when I am building a simple CRUD app. Even worse, they could make my code unnecessary complex. My app could suffer from such wrong decisions too. We need to learn to figure out what is best for our projects.

Conclusion

A little recap. Think about scope whenever you read blog articles and before you start questions your work or yourself. In many times you know your work, your team and clients better than everyone else out there. Of course let other people help you and inspire you. But don’t do everything they recommend. Believe in yourself and your decisions. You are a professional too!