Your own perfection hinders you

Remember when you first started programming? Did you think about tests? Did you plan an architecture before coding? Did you look at your results and thought what a crap? No, you were lucky to see something, something done. Imperfect but in a sense beautiful. You had a feeling of accomplishment. That little pixel that responded to you pressing keys, the little web page that just saved some data. You did something.
Now fast forward to today. You now write software professionally. With tests, architecture, well thought out. You are practicing an agile methodology (whatever that means). Don’t get me wrong these are all important points and can help you to get a solid implementation. But what if you need to implement a prototype? Just to try something? Fire and forget. Quick and dirty. Can you do it? Do you start with writing tests? Planning the architecture? Writing a spec? And afterwards: what do you think of the result? is it ugly? is it not done “professionally”?
What if you start in another field of your profession? Maybe you made websites your whole career and now start with desktop or mobile apps. Or you implemented back end code and now start writing code for the front end. Do you feel insecure? Do you think you just write crap? You shouldn’t. Remember your beginnings. Yes, you have matured, you know more, you write better. But you should celebrate getting something done. Shipping something. Seeing something. That feeling of accomplishment. Don’t criticize too hard, don’t be too harsh to you and your code. Get something done and then improve along the way. Just like when you started. Just keep shipping.
And for you, young software engineers, who just start. We all went through this phase. Don’t look at other’s work and think: wow, this looks so good and my work doesn’t. Think: he went also through this phase and now he can make this wonderful work, I will, too.
Ira Glass, an american writer said it best.