Fear the Boilerplate


I recently started working on a software tool in my spear time (yea, its raining a lot this time of year). The reason I started writing it was out of necessity, so I can automate some of the tasks in my current job whilst keeping myself busy until we can travel more. I have been a Java developer for a long time and I started using NodeJS only recently. Regardless since it was a small utility tool and the world has already moved on, I decided to use NodeJS to write it.

Now, I have never written a NodeJS application from scratch so far, I worked on some existing ones in my previous company, but never as a standalone console application. What I am trying to say is: I was hesitating a lot, because I had the feeling that I would drown in boilerplate code even before I start writing useful code. I needed something quick, just to finish my task and to get on with it...

I read a couple of articles online and feeling confident, I started coding. Not long after, I had a basic standalone console application with proper --help menu and IO established. NICE!

And then something amazing happened. I started developing the features I needed at an amazing pace. I could not stop my self, I would publish the latest version every night, going to bed and planning the next feature for the next day. I regained the excitement I had when I was just beginning to program in high school. It feels awesome. It almost feels nostalgic. Like my first bike ride. And I love it.

So what was preventing me to start writing my own code before?

  • Fear of boilerplate code
  • Always having something more important to do
  • Fearing the application would be useless
  • Thinking it will take a lot of time
So don't be like me (in the past), start doing what excites you NOW, boilerplates come and go, Github is forever 😀

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