There's no shortage of excuses to do things the wrong way. "Excuses" sounds harsh but I mean it in the least judgmental way possible, an excuse is just a reason, and I wouldn't fault anyone for doing something the wrong way, especially right now, because there's an endless stream of reasons for doing things any way you can manage to get them done.
But I'm trying to do a better job when I can and the thing that has been working for me lately (when I can remember to do it) is thinking about the people who will have to live with what I leave behind. On a larger scale, this is things like the state of the house I plan to leave to my son, but on a smaller scale it's the work I do every day, even the work that I don't want to do, like the work I do while forced to work with AI.
This work may be the most toxic of all the work I've done in my life, and for many reasons I won't enumerate here, it may be impossible to do it right.
But I think about the other programmers I work with who will inherit this code, and the people who will use the software that this code is a part of and I try to do the work in a way to produce something that will at least be better than it was when I found it.
I want to make it better for having had me there.
I don't think any of us can do this all the time. There are simply too many demands on our attention, our patience, our bodies and our minds not to mention whatever resources we've managed to scavenge together and none of this is our fault (or at least I don't think it's your fault, I doubt many billionaires read this blog). It's perfectly OK if you can't find a way to do things right when you're just trying to survive in this world.
But if you can find a way to do one thing, anything the way you think is right, the mental health benefits are tremendous.
Jason J. Gullickson, 2026