Working on work you didn’t initially work on.

Working at a media firm that has in-house web design and development is just different enough to be a parallel experience to freelance web design/dev. Yeah, there’s teamwork, there’s communication and idea relays from client at the front of the house to the team at the back, and the constant schedule of everything being due practically before it’s asked for.

However.

The biggest difference I’ve experienced from behind the keyboard- is working on code I didn’t write. I have a newfound appreciation for sticking to the good ideas and best practices, I’m commenting my code more so that even if I have to come back to my work I can jump back into where my mind was when I decided to build the way I did.

I was charged with updating a client’s website today and upon opening it up, I wanted to shake the hand of the person or people that wrote it. Line indentation, PHP pages that use includes for all shared components, consistency, commented JavaScript, etc. Immediately took the job from long and arduous to manageable and projected to take less time than myself and the rest of the team are expecting. This makes the whole project feel more like surgery than going to war.

This, and a couple of other experiences have made me recommit myself to building projects with this eventuality in mind having been on the receiving end. Beyond that, it’s incredibly informative to read over other’s work and see the right way, the wrong way, and the other way you didn’t think of approaching the project.

In short, well written and commented code singlehandedly cut the overtime I’ll be putting in over the weekend down to a couple of hours while still making a Monday deadline. My girlfriend will be thrilled that I’ll have some time to spend. Moral of the story: do it right because you’ll help the next guy look really awesome because the work gets done so quickly, you’ll make their significant other happier, and you might be the next guy under the hood.