Sprinters vs marathonians

It’s amazing, but developers are different! And I don’t mean different programming languages or stacks. I mean a programming philosophies.

Some programmers, let’s call them “sprinters”, write code that just works. This is the only internal acceptance criterion.The others, let’s call them “marathonians”, write code not only to make it work, but also to be able to maintain it for years.

The main difference is that “sprinters” don’t write tests and actually don’t care about coding style. The “marathonians” are obsessed with coding style and tests writing to the point where sparks fly, keeping in the mind SOLID and the other dev tricks.

The “marathonians” don’t like “sprinters” – they write sloppy code, “just to get it done”.

The “sprinters” don’t like the “marathonians” – they are doing tons of “useless“ work, “art for the sake of art”.

At first sight, long-term maintenance-focused programmers do all things the best way. However, they often come at a higher cost and spend more time on coding.

Who knows? Maybe for short-term, low-budget projects, we should act more like “sprinters”?