Last week there was a post on Coding Horror about the "Dangers of programming alone". Jeff quotes this article which does a fairly good job of expressing the plight. Programming is not a full-time aspect of my work (at least not now) but when we need an application to do some piece of analysis or run some piece of equipment I am the sole developer. While I can relate to watching myself make those mistakes I don't share the same bleak opinion of being a lone programmer. Over the years I've been slowly figuring out how to make the sole-developer arrangement work.


  • Discipline is key: As mentioned in the original post, and quoted on Coding Horror, there is a lack of oversight in a situation like this. You are your own overseer. You have to have a great deal of resolve to keep your code clean, to keep your work prioritized, to keep on deadline, to keep up with documentation.

  • It isn't really a vacuum: I've got some friends online that I frequently bounce ideas off of and vent to. They often don't know specifics of what I'm working on, and they don't work on anything similar to what I'm doing, but it has still been vital to keeping me sane.

  • Keep learning new things: My early work was all in VB6, since then I've done projects in C, C#, Java, and Ruby, as well as a bit of dabbling in Python. If I had been stuck doing VB6 all this time I probably wouldn't be coming back tomorrow.

  • Be in control: Keep in contact with the relevant parties involved in the project. Don't be afraid to say things like "this can't be properly implemented in that amount of time" or any other variation of "no". It's hard to say "no" because, at the end of the day I really want to do almost every project that gets proposed.

  • There's more to life: At the end of the day, every day, I go home and I play with my kids. There is no project, no deadline, and no responsibility in my professional life that is more important to me than my family. Of course that doesn't mean that I don't work late, or work at home on weekends, but it provides a necessary balance when work starts to stress me out. Of course this really has nothing to do with working in a vacuum, it is a basic necessity for any position.



I think suggesting that programmer should demand to work with other programmers, as suggested in the Coding Horror post, is a bit extreme. The real requirement is to be able to work in a way that won't drive us insane, whether alone or in a team.

Of course this is all based on my personal position, which doesn't involve programming for all 52 weeks in a year, being constrained to one project for extended periods of time, or distributing my applications to any wide audience. Maybe what I should be writing about is all the reasons I love my job ...