The holidays are coming 🎄
And between making pierogi 🥟 and baking gingerbread cookies, I felt like writing a post — because honestly, how long can you stand next to the stove? 😉
The longer I work in this industry, the more I feel we’re all basically the same. We struggle with similar problems, have similar thoughts, and make similar mistakes. Proof? This post of mine:
Nobody Writes Clean Code. We All Just Pretend
There wasn’t a single comment saying “that’s not true, our code is amazing!” 😄
So today I decided to go for a more humorous list — a collection of lies I think we all keep telling ourselves.
1. “This will only take a moment”
How many times have you said this after reading a task description?
And how many times did that “moment” turn into days of work because you discovered that 5 years ago, as a junior, you wrote a beautiful piece of spaghetti code in class X? 🍝
I try to automatically look for hidden traps these days, but I still fall for this one from time to time.
2. “I’ll refactor this later”
Suspiciously often, that later never comes 😉
Here’s a pro tip: creating a refactor task — even if it ends up buried at the very bottom of the backlog — dramatically increases the chances it’ll actually happen one day.
3. “We’ll definitely finish this by the end of the sprint”
Sure… if you forget to include twenty calls with another team and that one unexpected hotfix 🔥
If you can, always estimate with a buffer. In most projects, it’s better (in the PO’s eyes) to add work during a sprint than to not deliver what was planned — though, of course, it depends.
4. “I’ll write the tests later”
Same rule as with refactors: either you write them right away, or — if you really can’t — you create a task for them.
Otherwise… bye bye, tests 👋
5. “It’s just an edge case, no one will ever do that”
I don’t know how it is for you, but in my projects, if a bug can happen, at least a few users will always find their way there. Every. Single. Time. 😅
6. “This is definitely not on my side”
Impossible that it’s frontend/backend (cross out as needed).
Oh wait… you’re saying it is?
Oops. Yeah. Right. My bad.
7. “If it works on my machine, it’ll work everywhere”
Probably the most hated assumption by testers everywhere 🧪
And yet… we keep making it.
I’ll stop here, because I feel like I could keep going until tomorrow — and cakes won’t bake themselves 😉
Get ready for part two 😄
So… what are your biggest developer “lies”?
Let me know in the comments 👇
Top comments (32)
The daily grind of every developer, myself included! And if there are pierogies or gingerbread cookies… heaven can wait – so can testing and refactoring. My mouth is watering!
Exactly 😄 there are important things… and more important things 😀
And btw — fun linguistic fact: pierogi is actually plural in Polish. The singular form is pieróg 😄
learnt something new this Christmas, thanks 😆
Very good, because polski to najpiękniejszy język 🤣
Speaking of pierogi… The worst part is that I had just read that it was the plural of pieróg… but that didn’t stop me from making the mistake!
Honestly? I actually love that this Polish word is used abroad - even if it gets pluralized again 😄 It’s still way better than trying to invent some weird translation for it!
by the way, 1 hour in a developer's language is 2 days ( QA hasn't even tested it yet lmao )
Exactly 😂 and if it’s 3 days, it might as well take the whole sprint 😄
My scrum master always adds a multiplier on top of that - at least ×1.5 😅
I love the one about edge cases. I told my developers to put a percentage on it. Out of every 100 transactions how many will exhibit this behaviour. They low balled with something like 0.01%. Fair enough, a tenth of 1 percent. Now how many transactions do we process an hour? What does that look like now in terms of frequency? What is 0.01% of a million transactions a day? How many support tickets is that?
Exactly! That’s such a great way to explain it. Tiny percentages suddenly stop looking tiny when you’re dealing with massive scale. In big projects you really have to assume that every “edge case” will eventually become a very real, very frequent problem 😄
Add this to your follow up article on 7 truths about software engineering that nobody else believes, lols
Yeeeah, classics 😀 especially the “no plan survives contact with the customer” one.
And honestly, that’s probably one of the reasons AI won’t replace developers anytime soon 😄
Maybe that's just human nature? So many manufacturers think the same way, whether it's cars, kitchen appliances, scissors...
That’s a great point! 🙂 It really might just be human nature. And as psychology tells us, self-awareness is the first step toward change — so there’s still hope for us developers 😄
A good read this Christmas. Here I was, thinking it was just me but looks like it’s more of everyone’s going through the same.
Now that we know we all facing the same problem did anyone try or remotely find any success in mitigating these problems or is this a can’t be changed thing I wonder 😄
Glad it resonated! 😄 And yep, we’re all in the same boat. I think we’re slowly improving - awareness helps - but some of these things feel like they come bundled with being a developer 😂
Too real 😄 “I’ll refactor this later” and “it’s just an edge case” personally attacked me.
Also loved the reminder about creating actual tasks for refactors/tests — that tiny step really does change whether it ever happens.
Looking forward to part two 👀
Haha 😄 welcome to the club - I think we’ve all been personally attacked by at least one item on that list.
And yes, that tiny step of creating a task really does some psychological magic.
Part two is definitely coming!
I just read my entire programming life....
Haha 😄 seems like developers share some kind of collective unconscious - same struggles, same lies, same stories 😂
Hahaha 😆
Ill be thinking about pierogis all day now... :)
Haha 😄 then you should definitely visit Poland - pierogi everywhere!
And fun fact: during our holiday dinner, we even leave an extra place at the table for a “tired traveler” 😉
Challenge accepted! 😂
Thanks for sharing