Appreciating code by using it

A while back, Aaron added a command to the Mastering Laravel codebase which used his Typesetter package to easily produce a PDF for any range of published tips from this site.

As with everything on our projects, we review each other's code, so I read it, understood it, and ultimately approved it.

I'm sure at the time I thought "This looks good" or maybe I even just thought "I don't see any problems" and merged it.

But last week was the first time I actually went to use this new command, as I was about to generate our first few volumes of tips to publish on our Gumroad store.

Actually using the code was a very different experience from just reading and reviewing it. It struck me in a much more direct way just how good this code was.

I needed to make a few minor changes, and despite not being the author of the code, it was almost effortless to make the small tweaks I wanted.

I really appreciated the quality of the code at a much deeper level by using it, instead of just reading it.

I'm not sure if there's a deeper point to take from all of this. It's not practical to check out and use all the code we review, but at a minimum, maybe it would be nice to go back and tell your teammate how much you enjoyed it later when you do use it.

Here to help,

Joel

P.S. Want to see some of the new books we published?