Today my brain had a situation where it looped continuously making a decision whether to email a customer on their wording in an email. I got stuck for a few minutes at the keyboard before deciding to stop being a pedantic developer type being overly concerned with semantic correctness. The problem was that a customer asked for a handy feature addition which would save them lots of copy/paste keyboard time. It was a good idea for additional functionality, but the email request boiled down to “can this be fixed?”. This is what got my brain in a loop. Fixed? What’s broken? It works just as intended and requested, my developer’s brain replied internally. Sometimes, the attributes that make a good developer/programmer aren’t so good when applied to dealing with customers. Maybe we all need “Intellisense for the brain” to help us along our wayward semantic travels?
Overly Pedantic
July 20, 2004 | 5 min read
By Apolon Ivankovic