Developer Luck is Coming for You

                                                                                         Photo by Allec Gomes on Unsplash

Sometimes the stars align, and everything just clicks. As a software developer, this means you are able to solve today’s bug, push the expected feature and everything just works. 

I guess that happens to some people, but let’s be real. Developer luck is that elusive power that means today’s bug is unsolvable, we can’t get that feature finished and nothing works.

If you’ve never experienced Developer luck don’t worry. It’s coming for you. In the meantime, you can read about the common examples of developer luck that affect software developers each and every day.

The “Oops” Moment

It’s an extreme version leaving some print logging in production code.

Perhaps you are working on a quick feature update. You needed to get it done and perhaps in a rush thought, you’d hardcode a password. You’ll clean it up later, right?

Except you don’t.

You don’t think about it. Then the code goes into production at exactly the same time as you sip your fourth coffee of the day. Time passes, and then somewhere a telephone rings.

You scramble to fix the production defect. How did you forget to remove that shortcut? Everyone in the entire company knows what you’ve done, and your reputation has taken a hit.

Naturally, no one saw the clean, clever code you wrote last month. Nope. This is your legacy now. This is developer luck in effect.

The Mystery Fix

The monkey paw moment. You don’t know how to fix today’s bug. You move through each and every possible solution. Nothing works.

You cry. It doesn’t work. Nothing works.

You add code, you remove code. You remove all your changes, and then suddenly it works. What did you fix? Absolutely nothing. You think that developer luck has a positive side. You don’t know what you fixed but it’s working, and you go home happy.

Sometime in the future, be it a day, week or month the bug comes back. Now it’s a production incident and people are shouting. You get asked what you did to fix it last time, and of course, you don’t know. So, developer luck has simply waited for its time to strike back with a vengeance.

 The Perfect Demo

You’ve been building up to this moment for weeks. It’s demo day, and you’ve tested your feature countless times. Everything works like a charm. You confidently plug in your laptop, start walking your manager and stakeholders through the product, and right on cue… it breaks.

Spectacularly.

The feature that worked flawlessly in every dry run you’ve done implodes, leaving you stammering through explanations while your boss raises an eyebrow. Developer luck loves an audience.

The Curse of Look-Over-the-Shoulder Syndrome

There’s a theory that if you could see developer luck it would instantly disappear, due to its introverted nature.

Each and every time you write something genius nobody is looking. Spend a day, sprint, month or quarter delivering flawless code and nobody will notice. Nobody even cares. The product owner doesn’t even mention your work in the Sprint Review, and you’re forgotten in standup as your delivery is always perfect.

Then you make the most trivial mistake. It can even be while you’re coding and your colleague strolls up behind you and sees your desperate hunt for that semicolon. 

Developer luck ensures that your worst mistakes get the most attention.

Conclusion

Be careful out there. Developer luck has your name, GitHub password and number. It’s coming for you no matter what you do.