On leaving everything better than you found it
Leave everything better than the condition you found it in. Have you ever checked out a git repository and couldn’t get started developing right way? Or worse yet, it didn’t have a getting started section?
It is up to you to fix it
Nobody else is going to do it initially, but when you encounter a problem with documentation or getting started or small bugs, it is best to fix it right then and there.
After you fix this, it is important to open the dialogue about why it is important. In addition, you may introduce or suggest processes which make sure that it will not happen again. For example, you can:
- Check during merge requests. A merge request is a very powerful anchor to share knowledge and perform checks.
- Use git hooks or CI/CD. To enforce existence of these sections.
Why is it so important?
You train yourself
| How you anything is how you do everything.
It’s an excellent opportunity to train your Midas touch. Everything you touch turns to gold. If you don’t do this you develop the habit of accepting problems instead of fixing them.
In your career and in life you will be rewarded by solving problems, even if it technically isn’t related to your role
Process documentation is extremely important
In addition well documented processes are extremely important.
Don’t fear about being replaced
Don’t worry about you being replaced by documenting stuff. Sometimes people fear that if yuo document everything you do, you will becom easy to replace. Whilst on the surface this may look like it, but the qualities of people doing this are not easily found.
In addition, it helps to empower other people to iterate on your work and it frees you up to perform more efficiently. It will help you produce even better results overall.
Not just processes
You don’t need to limit this to just processes. You can make any room you enter or leave a little better, whether it is at work or at home.
It can also be just code. Remove what is no longer needed, update documentation, update the dependencies. Add a test case after fixing a bug. The list goes on and on.
What is better?
As software developers it is important to be precise. So what do we mean with make stuff better? What is better?
Easier or shorter
I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead. ~ Winston Churchill
It’s always better to make stuff easier, shorter or simpler to understand.
Maintainability
If you can remove dependencies to make your code more maintainable, please do so. In addition, any small refactor helps. My personal philosophy is that a junior developer should be able to understand any code it encounters.
Up-to-date “Getting started”
A team member of mine actually checks out any code during a merge request and makes sure another developer can start coding on it with the steps provided in the README.
You will find that this a very powerful principle since making it easy to contribute to results in more contributions and going to market faster.
Start Small
There are a lot of ways to improve stuff you find. But if it becomes a way of live, you will improve as well as everything around you. The most important part is just to get started with small stuff, and you’ll start to realize,
How you do anything is how you do everything. ~ Marquis de Gramont