The Software Development Sniff Test🐶

Software developers fancy themselves as hyper-logical, people able to solve problems with nothing but caffeine and a ramen.

Yet we should perhaps take a leaf out of the book of our pets, and trust our gut instinct. We should use our sniff test to see whether the people and code around us are worth trusting with our instincts (and noses).

We need to develop a sniff test to make sure things can be trusted in the world of software development. 

When It Goes Wrong

You’re in a code review. Someone submits a pull request with lines of spaghetti code, some of which seem to be copy-pasted from Stack Overflow. You question it in the comments, and the response is overly defensive, bordering on aggressive.

Sometimes the behavior of the developer doesn’t feel right at all, and we should be looking for that signal and acting upon it. Just as you might side-eye someone who says they “don’t like dogs,” trust your instincts when a colleague is giving off the wrong vibes.

So, when one of our developers stopped giving code reviews at all none of us really paid attention. We just kept on with our work and kept going with our lives. The performance of the developer steadily declined until it became a problem, and ultimately, they left the organization entirely leaving behind poorly-written, untested code that no one dares to touch. It’s us remaining developers who are left to pick up the slack, and it should be our job to listen to our guts and start growling if something feels wrong.

Trust the Debugger

Software development is a strange mix of intuition and analysis. Much like dogs, who operate on instinct but also learn behavior over time, developers get better at “sniffing out” problems with experience. 

The key is learning when to trust that sense of unease and knowing when to act upon it.

Here are some examples:

When a build feels too rushed, question it. If something “smells” off, it probably is.

If someone keeps defending their code with “it works, so who cares about style,” they might not be the kind of person you’d want on your team long-term.

When a team member constantly avoids eye contact during stand-ups (virtual or otherwise), it’s worth following up. Maybe they’re struggling, and you’re the one who can help them.

Trust, But Verify

Like a dog sniffing out a new visitor, approach everything with curiosity and caution. Just because your gut says, “this code is bad” doesn’t mean it is.

So here is what you should do.

Verify your feelings. Run the tests. Check the logic. Follow up on those comments. But don’t ignore that initial sense of “this doesn’t sit right.”

In the end, the best developers are the ones who listen to their instincts but aren’t ruled by them. They’re the ones who care about the health of the team and the codebase. They’re the dogs who’ll bark when something’s wrong but wag their tails when everything’s good.

Conclusion

I think there are a few things all software developers should be suspicious of. People who don’t like feedback, collaboration, or learning. 

So, if there are signs of those types of people within your team that’s something to pay attention to. After all, the best teams are built on trust, and the best codebases are maintained by people who care enough to sniff out problems before they bite. Leave it too late and it might just be you who gets mauled.