Member-only story
4 Mistakes I Made as a Programmer, but I Had To Become a CTO To See Them
2. My code is an art and has to be perfect
I was working as a programmer for over five years. It isn’t impressive since some of you probably have three times longer work experience, but I liked to think of myself as a senior developer. That sounds serious and important, doesn’t it?
One day, I got a proposition to work as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in the med-tech startup. After some time in this new job role, I can look back and say, I wasn’t a senior developer. Don’t get me wrong — I still believe I have excellent knowledge about programming, especially web development — but, if that’s the case, why did I say I wasn’t a senior?
Because of these four things I have in my head now.
1. The User Is an Idiot
No, they are not.
Yes, users use the app in an unexpected, often weird, way.
Yes, users can ask questions that seem really stupid.
Yes, sometimes users demand features that seem pointless.
Yes, users have difficulties with functions that seem to be self-explanatory.
The user is not an expert. My doctor doesn’t require me to know the difference between low-density and high-density lipoproteins. So, why did I used to assume users should know what kind of browser they use? It is obvious to me and you, but my mom thinks Google and the internet are synonyms. She would say she doesn’t use any browser because she uses Google 🙈.
Sometimes to make the user happy, I had to override framework parts to change its default behaviors. Sometimes I had to add support for browsers I didn’t want to (greetings for Safari users 😅 ). It is silly when I’m talking about it today, but those days I really thought it was the client’s fault when I had to make some workarounds in my code just because of their custom requirements.
