Lately I have been screwing around with creating a blog framework using MVC and jQuery, the former being more troublesome from a design stand point. For example, The use of controllers and actions can cause a great deal of second guessing. Do I put all the admin view attached actions, like one for viewing a list of posts to select and edit, on an Admin controller? Do I have a Post Admin Controller and a Comment Admin Controller? Should anything having to do with Posts be on one Post controller and just seperate the actions based on attributes? (As in MustBeAdminAttribute as opposed to MustBeLoggedIn) After all controllers are about grouping things, but how the h— should they be grouped? Of course, that’s a sort of gray area an subject to debate. The problem is I can’t help but think not matter what, I’m making the wrong choice. Why? Mostly because I know I’m not a super programmer.
Now this isn’t going to be an Atwood, back patting, I’m so good I know I’m bad kind of post but something has really occurred to me more and more lately. As I’ve gone deeper and deeper into things like Entity Framework, MVC, and jQuery I’ve only been left with the feeling that someone else, somewhere is doing this a lot better. Maybe it’s because my lack of experience with them, maybe it’s just a self depreciating nature thing, but it’s also having access to too many good programmers due to the plethora of them on the internets. Yeah right, that’s a bad thing? Well it kind of is. It’s tough doing anything anymore when you know there are people far better than you doing a far better job. And with the advancement of information sharing, you can’t help but find proof of that. With that comes a certain guilt that you aren’t the top of the food chain and in fact you just might be a programmer the other better people complain about. That’s right, you. Someone at this very moment is straight up banging his/her head against a desk because of something you wrote.
Some would suggest this is the sign of a good programmer. Someone who is never completely happy with his/her performance. F— that, it just plain sucks and makes what can be enjoyable an epic pain in the a–. No one wants to be that guy, you know the one that names every variable with numbers (v1 + v2 = v3) or has one gigantic method that does everything. Problem is, this is all relative. One person’s perfection is another guy’s multi purpose stored procedure that runs 10 different query using a switch and a passed in string. Code perfection is in the eye of the beholder. And by now we all know there are plenty of high end beholders.
What does that mean? You can never win at the game of programming. Read it again. You can never win at the game of programming. That is unless you are beyond a doubt the sharpest bulb in the bunch. For the rest of us chumps, it’s grin and bear it time.
That’s it. That’s the answer. Suck it up. Don’t like that answer? Refer back to the answer. Fact is, you’ll never be perfect and if you were, chances are you wouldn’t be reading this nonsense. You’d be out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico kicking it back on some island you own. For the rest of us mortals (Or dumb immortals), it’s time to join the Tool Fiesta. Start dancing, drinking, and accepting. I’m not saying that you can’t better yourself. Hell maybe you’ll be one of the top people out there… and optimistically thinking, considering this site, maybe you are (What the hell are you doing here though?). But you aren’t going to be perfect and neither is your code. However, sitting around and worrying about producing perfect code is just sitting around. Have to figure some code is better than no code at all right? Just lie to me.
LOL Here’s a little secret from the rest of us doing MVC, Entity Framework, and jQuery….. We’re all guessing. 🙂 Surprise! We all act like we have a handle on doing it the “right way” but it’s basically a crap shoot and the only way you’ll know is to try it out and see if it works.