How you do anything is how you do everything

I first came across the saying How you do anything is how you do everything, in the sense that you should afford the same diligence and care to every part of your life or work as you would the things that you especially care for and value, in one of Gregg Hurwitz The Nowhere Man novels a few years back and it stuck with me. Especially since my interest in coding quality and coding professionalism set in.

In my mind, the saying speaks of investing care and thoroughness in every part of a process of, for example, developing software; from the analysis of new feature, definition of tests and specifications, through refinements, writing of unit test, development, code reviewing, testing, documenting, packaging, distribution and delivery and so on. In each and every single activity involved in getting a new feature or fixed defect into the hands of the users, quality should always be the guiding star.

Every part of a processes that’s evolved, both consciously and unconsciously, is equally important for the success of the processes itself. If one part fail, quality is diminished for that feature, and the more features that creeps through the safeguards increase the quality and technical dept of the entire product. That’s the reason for testing, for code reviews, for refinements, for code scanning and each and every safeguard put in place.

To do anything just as you do everything is the professional programmers absolute responsibility.

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