I spoil the development of my life with my code review and I don’t want to

One day my team was so weak that they were going to fire him (fire the developer!). Each of my comments on the review to his code was a nail in the coffin lid. I almost heard the hammer knock, pressing “submit review”. He was a pleasant person, I was even worried about him, but this did not prevent me from carrying his efforts into chips. My right to criticize his work seemed obvious and inalienable. It's simple - I'm stronger, I'm right. Nobody wants to say that bad code is good, eh? He was fired by depriving the standard premium for several months.

I said to myself: “But you don’t do all the work for me !? He took the place of a more talented developer. I did the right thing. ” But for some reason, cats scrubbed at heart. And when I came to the review of the next pull request, something very much changed.

At first glance, everything was as before. I opened pr, looked what problem it solves. He estimated how I would decide it, and began to look at the code. There, as always, slop. The decision was not like what I would have done. Ok, smashed it as a whole and moved on to the details. Line by line I look at the code, find problems and semi-problems, and passwords-aggressive comments to the fuck.
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I was again technically stronger. Pull request for a thousand lines of code received two hundred comments from me, leaving no chance for a person to believe in his competence. Fine.

I hover over the “submit review” button and suddenly thought. Why am I doing this?

The reason for the evil revision code seems to be obvious. I, as part of the team, are fully responsible for the code base of the project. I then work with her. This is the source of a lot of problems for business. The code does not scale, is not tested, filled with bugs to the eyeballs. His support is more expensive and more expensive. He does not put in open source, do not lure them to new employees.

And then this fool with his govnokodom. After all, so usually explain their criticality? A good developer stands guard over the interests of the business. That the company was all well and worked like a clock.

That's just, it seems, I do not believe it. I do not believe that this is my motive.

I was furious that while I was sitting until the night, studying F #, my daughter began to call dads all the men around. And this dude instead of swinging, quietly went home to the children. And I wanted to punish him.

Because my motive on the review is self-affirmation. I deeply sneeze what is there for the code in the project. I'm just an asshole who was allowed to legally hurt people. Dangerous psychopath with license to kill. Alpha male with a big club.

When I realized this, I was very ashamed of myself. Ten times ask me what kind of person I am, and ten times I will answer that I am not a harmful complexed bastard. At least in all other aspects of his life. Then why am I so angry in the profession?



When I was learning to develop, all sorts of forums were one of the most useful sources for me. I brought my next question there and received a lot of ridicule, assurances that my task is shit, my approach to its solution is shit, my PL is wrong, and I generally have nothing to do in the slender ranks of "good" programmers.

Too often, I wanted to get better just to wipe my nose. I rocked like in a sport - not for the sake of a good goal, but to become “faster, higher, stronger” than others. As a novice boxer who wants to knock out champions from tele.

It was very painful, but I coped.

Having become better, I gave my code for reviewing real wolf-ammers. Developers who are more talented than me, and have three times more experience. I cynically poked my face into my shit, having done it in such a way that I myself understood that it was necessary to throw it out of the work. I'm too stupid for all this. The code I came to during the week was pulled apart in a few minutes, and each complaint was ridiculously obvious and correct. Oddly enough, the next day I convinced myself that another year or two, and we will see who is the king of the jungle.

And then, finally, I became the same toxic scumbag who waves his skills like fists. And I do not conduct the code review for the sake of business success. I just like to poke the novice poor fellows into their shit. Technical pumping, finally, began to bear fruit.

If a person brings me a code, and there are weak spots there, I beat them with all my strength and pleasure because I'm smart. I feel good, and my left hemisphere will explain everything for me, as a PR man for nosyachivshego politics. The left hemisphere will tell logically that I am really good, just keeping track of the code base and the success of the company. Only logic is not a guarantee of truth.

And if you tell me that you are not blushing by the feeling of your own superiority, then you are lying. Talk to me about good goals, learning newcomers and generosity - I know that you are just being dragged away from you deep down. And if you say that you have learned to exclude selfish joy from self-assertion (no matter how it manifests itself in you), then I am a pink unicorn.

But that's what I thought. On the one hand, I learned how to develop because I asserted myself at my expense. I was roused by anger, and this anger caused me to get better. The universe put into me the buzz of personal superiority, so that I also wake up anger in the young and inexperienced, so that they themselves become angry mega-brains, pushed others to study, and so repeated again and again.

With our desire for self-assertion, we are just a stupid tool in the hands of natural selection. I would accept this thought and put up with it if I did not find one critical bug.



When you start to copy other successful ones, and they are one and all - arrogant, arrogant assholes, you are such "Hey, I can do that too." You start talking like some damn genius who has learned all the secrets of programming, and suddenly everything turns out. You expose your power in words, and you believe.

I felt with my skin that everything that I possessed got to me not because I was competent, but because I was an egomaniac. All egocentric people in my environment are much more successful than non-egocentric ones. Their code is better, they get better projects and more money. They seem to managers and directors to be more valuable personnel, their colleagues respect them.

It turned out, instead of becoming really cool, enough to convince everyone that you're cool. The endless cycle of growth at the expense of pain has become a vicious circle, which produces not toxic professionals, but toxic talkers.

And if you managed to get through this way, you are afraid that the image of the strong will shatter. Then you begin to maintain a cult of power and superiority. That is, you convince yourself and those around you that the external manifestations of force are the force.

Working as a developer you have to argue all the time. You, as a team, choose solutions as a result of disputes, let them be called discussions. And for some reason, there is a persistent feeling in my head that it is very important that it is your decisions that “win” more often. Just to feel good and not to doubt his strength.

This is like an old case in my life. I had a position that gays are bad. I didn’t think much about it, just once a long time ago, Dad said it was bad, and I remembered. Once I drank with a crowd of liberals, and this topic surfaced. I immediately introduced them to my position, and they are such "no Phil, you're wrong." Well, started arguing. I never thought about it seriously, I really had no arguments. And in general, I absolutely do not give a shit, gays are good, or bad. But I could not afford to stop arguing. My main motive was to win and save face. I do not know why.

Now I continue in the same spirit. For some reason it seems to me incredibly important to win disputes all the time, to be right in everything, not to be defeated and not to know the mistakes. No matter whose idea is better, it is important that my idea be implemented.

This is all very, very bad. I do not want, and never wanted to be so!



Review from the beginning of the article - I did not send it. Instead, he gave the dude comments with polite suggestions to fix a couple of small things. It's okay if the code is bad, I can fix it myself. A person broken by dozens of such reviews, I can not fix.

My personality today is not a symptom of my illness. Sick industry, at least in the Russian Federation. Our mentality is fixated on a cult of strength and superiority. And here is what you need to do: you have to stop being like that. It is actually very simple.

If everyone laughed at us while we were newcomers - this does not mean that now we must recoup. The vicious circle breaks easily. The ability to play in disputes greatly facilitates life. The ability to recognize that other virgins are more talented than you will make life completely simple.

This is an aikido trick. I deceive my evil toxic egomaniac, convince him that to accept his weakness is cool, and he begins to be proud of noble deeds.

And what's the difference, in what a forbidden way I please myself, if the life around it gets better from it.