I’ve been criticized for this by my coworkers in the past, but I strongly believe that this is generally true and has been for quite a while. Developers, myself included, like to think their code is special, set in stone and going to last forever. Most the code we write struggles to live a few years yet we treat all of it like it’s going to last forever. I’ve been an advocate for flipping that and treating it like our code will not last long, and when we identify the components that will, going back and optimizing them.

I’m pretty confident that most developers, again including myself, just really enjoy knowing something is done well. Being able to separate yourself from the code and fixate solely on the outcomes can sometimes get me past this.