{"id":3223,"date":"2021-02-22T09:57:21","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T09:57:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/?p=1339940"},"modified":"2021-02-22T09:57:21","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T09:57:21","slug":"what-my-biggest-fuck-up-as-a-developer-taught-me-about-taking-ownership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/?p=3223","title":{"rendered":"What my biggest fuck-up as a developer taught me about taking ownership"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article was originally published by Tomasz \u0141akomy on <\/span><\/i>.cult by Honeypot<\/span><\/i><\/a>, a Berlin-based community platform for developers. For the latest updates, follow .cult by Honeypot on <\/span><\/i>Twitter<\/span><\/i><\/a>, <\/span><\/i>Facebook<\/span><\/i><\/a>, <\/span><\/i>Instagram<\/span><\/i><\/a>, <\/span><\/i>Linkedin<\/span><\/i><\/a> and <\/span><\/i>YouTube<\/span><\/i><\/a>.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Building software is what we \u2014 developers \u2014 are paid for.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, more often than not we\u2019re also paid to break stuff. Then, we get an \u201camazing\u201d opportunity to fix what we\u2019ve broken.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think we talk enough about those<\/i> stories.<\/p>\n

Do you know how your Instagram feed is full of absolute highlights? Well, it\u2019s the same when it comes to developer horror stories. I\u2019ve heard some which would make your skin crawl. It\u2019s funny though, we don\u2019t often share these stories.<\/p>\n

I strongly believe there\u2019s a lesson to be learned from every \u2018fuckup.\u2019 And there\u2019s probably a funny story behind every odd rule your company has.  \u201cWhy do we have a code freeze before major holidays?<\/i>\u201d \u2014 because Mike and Jenny had to spend their entire Christmas Eve migrating the database after a yolo-merge.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy can\u2019t I push directly to <\/i>master<\/b><\/i>? I know what I\u2019m doing!<\/i>\u201d \u2014 sure, but one time Andrew wrote-off two weeks of work off the repo when he accidentally force pushed to master<\/b> (I am not<\/i> making this up, this actually happened in my career).<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy is there a warning on my shirt telling me not to iron it when I\u2019m wearing it? Who does this?<\/i>\u201d \u2014 you know the deal, it happened once, and now it\u2019s a continual warning.<\/p>\n

Now, I want to tell you the story of my biggest fuckup from when I was still a junior engineer.<\/p>\n

[Read: How do you build a pet-friendly gadget? We asked experts and animal owners<\/span><\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n

Did someone order fried motherboards?!<\/b><\/h2>\n

A bit of background before we continue. At the beginning of my career in tech, I worked as a Junior Software Engineer at a Samsung R&D Center in Poland. I was being paid to build some pretty unique apps \u2014 my team was creating JavaScript applications for\u2026 SmartTVs.<\/p>\n

Side note: building apps for TVs is wonderful because there\u2019s only one resolution you need to care about, so we could style entire apps with <\/i>position: absolute<\/b><\/i>; because why not!<\/i> SmartTVs have an entire motherboard in them (with surprisingly good hardware \u2014 we\u2019re talking about multiple core processors and gigabytes of RAM! In a freaking TV!). At this point (back in 2013\/2014) hardware was cheaper than software [citation needed]<\/i>.<\/p>\n

In 2013, while at Samsung I was moved to a brand new exciting project: Tizen<\/a>. I was moved since I had \u2018vast\u2019 experience with C++, apparently, two semesters at university was enough to qualify.<\/p>\n

To quote Wikipedia: Tizen is a Linux-based mobile operating system backed by the Linux Foundation but developed and used primarily by Samsung Electronics.<\/p>\n

At the time Tizen was really<\/i> cutting edge (operating systems under heavy development tend to break all the time) but one day we got a present from HQ.<\/p>\n

Three brand new shiny motherboards with the newest Tizen firmware.<\/p>\n

In under an hour, two of them were fried to the point of no return.<\/p>\n

Yes, I literally fried the \ud83d\udca9 out of them.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Well, I was told to perform a system update on those motherboards and to follow the instructions I was given.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the instructions did not take into account a quirk in the newest system version, and performing those steps turned the rather expensive SmartTV motherboard into a useless piece of plastic.<\/p>\n

After doing the system update on the first board I knew something funky happened. Did I make a mistake? I must have, crap, what do I do now?<\/i><\/p>\n

Since I didn\u2019t have a lot of experience I decided to simply repeat the steps one more time, this time making sure that I followed the instructions 100%. Turns out that I did<\/i> follow them correctly both times.<\/p>\n

I could have pretended I didn\u2019t touch those boards, maybe they had arrived broken \u2014 honestly, everyone would have believed me.<\/p>\n

After all, this was cutting-edge stuff, things were supposed to break.<\/p>\n

But in the end, I decided to tell my team lead:<\/p>\n