Do you ever mistrust your ability?

NogDog

Yesterday I was working on adding a method to a report generation class to extract some info from a DB. I spent maybe close to an hour trying to figure out how to wind my way through half a dozen tables to get the data I needed grouped the way I wanted. Then I started writing the method, including the query with 5 joins in it. Then, throwing caution to the wind (since it was all read-only), I ran the script -- and it worked! At that point, after getting over the surprise that I apparently had not misspelled any table names or made any other typographic errors, I couldn't shake the feeling that I must have done something wrong.

Oh well, pending last-minute priority changes, I'll be testing it more thoroughly this afternoon and finding out if I really am that good. 😉 😃

traq

NogDog wrote:
Do you ever mistrust your ability?

Every time I get a fantastic idea and it works on the first try. Every single time.

Derokorian

I get those moments all the time. Over the weekend a while back I spent the whole weekend working without a local DB or internet access, by the time I got to work monday I wrote over 3000 lines of code. When I was finally able to test it for the first time it worked, I then spent 2 days trying to find out what didn't work (turns out only 1 small error, that I didn't even catch myself).

Bonesnap

I do all the time. After I write something, test it and it appears to work, I go over the code again just in case. If it doesn't work, I go over the code anyway. Maybe I just like reading my own code?

sneakyimp

Depending on the complexity of the task at hand -- and the clarity of any existing software design -- I think that level of confidence happens with a certain amount of experience. At that point, the insecurity shifts to other concerns -- like security against exploits and scalability and extensibility and maintainability and performance. There's always something to worry about.

cretaceous

Not so long ago I got into the 'confident mode' and would build and test locally and upload to live without any further testing .. why should I.. if it works locally, of course it's going to run on the server.
I don't let myself do that any more...