Do Software Developers get Emotionally Attached to their code?

[Munchies_Matt]

Yes. And it one of the biggest mistakes coders make.

[jgakenhe]

No, I don't get attached. My preference is to write clean, easy to read, low defect code that others can easily maintain. I don't need credit for anything. I do get ticked off when someone makes a change to my code and decides to reformat it or not follow the coding standards. The typical reply I get is "it works!"

[Jacquers]

Having others work on 'your' project can be both good and bad. I was really attached to my previous project at my old job. I had worked on it for 5+ years and it was my 'baby' and I put in a lot of effort to make it a top notch product. I am pedantic about code formatting and how I think code should be written, so when another developer also worked on the code and didn't do code formatting and left out some things like window icons I wasn't too happy. But it can get too much and make you arrogant, thinking that nobody else can do the job properly. On a recent project I was glad to have some help and I actually found some respect for my fellow workers - they did a very nice job with the code and styling work and I can learn from their code.

[DJ van Wyk]

Amen to that. I take a lot of pride in the work I do, even if nobody else cares.

My plan is to live forever ... so far so good

[kalberts]

Sure, if you ask about the first "big" subsystem I was "product responsible" for, in my first job after my graduation in 1983: Sure. I have always known where I keep the box with the source code printout, and every now and then I feel a slight urge to glance through it, one more time. Your firstborn is always special. Yet I hope that parents with five or six kids have stronger emotional ties to #5 and 6 than I have to the fifth and sixth product I worked on. And nowadays, 30+ years later? I am so happy if someone wants to take over my code. My experience is that whenever someone seizes control over someone else's code, they will "clean it up" - that is, reformat it, remove "unneccessary" comments and add others, join or split classes, rename variables... All of this may of course be limited by company coding standards, but everybody is eager to mould the code into their own style as far as possible. When I see the code again, a year later, I hardly recognize it as originally being my code. So I never weep "What did you do to MY code, you cruel code molestor??" - that isn't my code. You do whatever you want to it. Actually, I feel more emotional ties to architectures and designs. What really bugs me is when I have been fighting in vain for some major architectural change over a long time, but it is rejected (usually due to cost), then when I leave that project, three months later it is decided that "it seems like we simply have to impement that change / design"... That has happened to me several times - and in every case, it is presented as a contribution of the reorganized project team with no reference to the work done earlier. But since I wasn't involved at the time the architecture / design was finally accepted, there is nothing that I can attach to as "mine".

[jsc42]

DJ van Wyk wrote:

I take a lot of pride in the work I do

So do I, but when I look again at it some months later, I have a very different reaction to it along the lines of "What was I thinking? This is awful!"

[_Asif_]

Yes, there is strong feeling of attachment. I still miss all the code that i had written long ago and lost it (8 inch floppy disks)

Do      Read();      Research();      Experiment(); UnTil You Inspire!

[User 8413112]

Yesterday I came across some code that I wrote at least 25 years ago and is still being shipped as a part of my company's products. I would write it differently today, but I've got to admit that it gave me a bit of the warm & fuzzy knowing that's it's still doing its' job in countless medical labs around the world today.

It's a hard life. But somebody's got to live it, if only to act as an inspiration to others.

[MikeTheFid]

Completely off topic... John, I was sharing your signature with a friend who is a retired special forces paratrooper. He gave me one to give to you:

Quote:

If your hear the shot I wasn't aiming at you.

Cheers, Mike Fidler "I intend to live forever - so far, so good." Steven Wright "I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met." Also Steven Wright "I'm addicted to placebos. I could quit, but it wouldn't matter." Steven Wright yet again.

[UncleBuckFever]

I long for the day my code lets ME go...

[lkline]

haha, remember spending four years writing in 8086 assembler code, until the C compilers generated useful code. Remember spending four months writing a Base 10,000 math package, sort/merge using qsort, pcode interpreter runtime for a Cobol compiler. I loved doing it and still remember it as some of the best fun I had at the time. For me it was always about the challenge, of course the stock options and bonuses made the IRS and me very happy. Lost a girlfriend after I started and gained girlfriend before the next task, repeat as needed until death.

Lyle

[decaffeinatedMonkey]

It is projects that I become knowledgeable about the domain of that I turn into an emotional wreck and get attached to the code that I write. Its at that point my creativity neurons start activating and I (try) to design and write elegant software, and thus become an emotional wreck whenever someone else decides to fix a "bug".

[jschell]

That is why I eventually threw out the punch cards and paper tape.

[englebart]

Both. We have a major cleanup branch about to start that will remove hundreds if not thousands of obsolete classes due to an architecture update. The old code served us well for more than a decade, but its time has come to ride into the sunset. (or be buried in SCM)

[Abbas A Ali]

Quote:

Never argue with a fool. Onllokers may not be able to tell the difference. Mark Twain

Glad to see I'm not the only one who spells onlookers as onllokers!