I think of it in terms of levels building on top of each other, or circles enveloping each other; also how I evaluate interviewees and new hires:

1. Finishes the task, but needs handholding
2. Finishes the task, figuring it out from docs, guides, and internet
3. Finishes the task, proactively trying to make sure it doesn’t return again as a bug or failing QA
4. Finishes the task, designing things in a way so that devs don’t need to put in extra effort in the future

In short, learning how to do something right, but also alternative strategies, how to pick the best option, and finally make sure you always end up with the right choice, or automatically do so, by design.

It’s at core a matter of experience, but taking on new opportunities and reading up helps to accelerate that.

The new feature being demoed vs the legacy code it depends on

Voice messages are good for those who speak a language which doesn’t get focused on by transcription services or are too old to read tiny text

The circular reasoning I got after proposing to use a code formatter:

• Why are you nitpicking on PRs? Let’s use a linter instead
• Yes we already have a linter for compliance sake
• Oh it’s turned off though. I don’t like it.
• No we can’t use it actually, it’s a third party one and it’s not compliant.
• We can’t use the first party one. It’s not extensive enough.
• No we shouldn’t extend it with our own custom rules. It’s too much maintenance.
• I refuse to use any IDE formatting shortcuts or plugins, and will commit my code as I feel. The problem is not how I write my code.
• Why are you still discussing this? Didn’t you figure out how to use a linter yet?

We’re still at square one with this after a year or so

Same , but in my experience this can backfire even worse because the other person thinks you are trying to show off as well as make them look bad. But the problem is less with you and me, and more with this type of person

I wonder if it’s all those variables named with single letter and abbreviations, so annoying to code review