The Cowboy Coder | KodefuGuru

The Cowboy Coder

Back in the 90s, I was a certified cowboy coder. Even in 2000 when I started working on a team project, the team and the product had little to no discipline. Requirements were handed off as features the owner of the company would like, and they were divided up to be tackled by individuals based on interest. Some might call this “agile,” but there were no cycles, no unit testing, little shared ownership, and little accountability. I did things my own way, and learned from others around me.
As I matured as a developer, I came to realize how important certain skills were in working with teams. I found myself worrying about the maintainability of code as I knew it would one day be handed off to others. I found myself wanting to ensure my code does what I expected it to do. I found myself caring less about what I was doing specifically and more about the success of the team.