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The first inclination of programmers when confronted with a problem is to start coding immediately or design a general solution. I know because I’m guilty of this no matter how small the problem simply because I can.
I doubt I’m the only one who has an obsessive and irresistible urge to stay away from all things manually. We’re coders so we believe we should code. To do anything else would be a waste of our talent, skills, and effort. Thus, manual processes like data entry, file manipulation, or calculations are viewed as just a waste of time that could be allocated to thinking and coding up a general and scalable solution long-term.
I justify to myself that it doesn’t need to be a big and complex program, just some starter code. I don’t need the design to be generalizable to withstand a nuclear explosion, it just has to be beyond “this” super narrow problem. Really, it’s just that I feel I have to do something technical as an end in itself.
Given an ideal situation with no priorities or financial issues, it may not matter if you do manual processes, or start coding or designing immediately, since it’s a fun exercise to generalize and to start coding something. Plus…
