Bridging the emotional barrier of a code rewrite.
Tags: life, sofwaredevelopment, emotions
Published: 2019-08-23 19:47:58

---
title: Bridging the emotional barrier of a code rewrite.
published: true
description: As a developer, we are like artists, we take pride in the code we write. Have you ever spent a significant number of hours, working on a feature, taking careful steps to test it and validate its functionality? If yes, then someone might have also told you to change it, if not completely at least partially. Well, I have been in that situation. Despite a few years of experience, the stress and emotional barrier generated by this change is always enormous.
tags: Life, Sofware Development, Emotions
---




As a developer, we are like artists, we take pride in the code we write. Have you ever spent a significant number of hours, working on a feature, taking careful steps to test it and validate its functionality? If yes, then someone might have also told you to change it, if not completely at least partially. Well, I have been in that situation. Despite a few years of experience, the stress and emotional barrier generated by this change is always enormous.

How to deal with this? It is unquestionable how hard it is to deal with this emotion, the feeling of being disappointed, unmotivated, discordant. We can not deny the fact that we are emotional beings easily tampered with. The first step is to admit your emotions. Think about them, try to identify why you are feeling in such a way. The second step is to vent it out, try to put your feelings in words, tell the story of how you arrived at that feeling. It is often common while venting, for the person to realize what is behind his/her emotional state because he/she is hearing him- herself.

## The Someone

Finding the ideal someone to talk to can be hard. It’s a good idea to have a friend, who you can be open about anything, who is not biased or intoxicated by the same feelings as you. You might want to avoid your coworkers for that reason since they share the same context, they might feel the same pain. It won’t help if the person you are venting to is motivating your negative feelings.

Do not ignore your feelings. When a feeling was triggered by an underlying trauma, which we often have no clue about. It will easily go away after venting. When we try to evaluate something rationally and it does not make any sense our brain discards it. However, do not ignore this, if this feeling keeps coming back on similar triggers you should seek for help with professional therapists.

Self-awareness is a great tool to deal with our emotions. Love yourself, take care of yourself. Thank you for reading this, I wrote this article after facing an emotional issue triggered by a code rewrite. It shocked me how intense I felt. After dealing with my emotional state rationally. I tried to think of all of the things which caused me to feel the way I felt. I found out a few interesting things about myself in this process which I believe made me grow emotionally. Hopefully, this text will inspire you to be aware of your emotions and take care of yourself.

<q>Saying no is hard because we are a species that (sadly) treats agreement as affection and denial as rejection. When people disagree with us or turn us down, we routinely (and typically incorrectly) interpret it as evidence of enmity.</q>
https://hbr.org/2019/08/how-to-say-no-at-work-without-making-enemies