Why Breaking Coding Rules Can Actually Make You a Better Developer

From a psychological perspective, breaking or violating rules can feel exciting, like speeding on a 55 km/h road at 80 km/h, and developers often experience a similar thrill when they bend programming conventions.

Code is full of rules that diligent developers apply rigorously, hoping to avoid bugs and even expecting hardware to follow them perfectly. Yet some rules are not sacred; they should be flexible, like a spring, to bring consistency to irregular code rather than dictate machine behavior.

No Comments

While undocumented code is hard to read and debug, excessive or poorly written comments can be counterproductive, especially when documentation lags behind code changes or is written in an unfamiliar language.

Slow Code

Speed and simplicity are often at odds; overly complex code may run fast but become unreadable, whereas slightly slower, clearer code is usually preferable.

Weird Code

New language features—like JavaScript’s spread operator or ellipsis—can make code look concise, but they may also introduce confusion and increase the learning curve for reviewers.

Ancient Cryptic Features

Language designers pack powerful abstractions into compact syntax, leading to massive manuals; overusing such “syntactic sugar” can create chaos, as seen with languages like APL or overly feature‑rich libraries.

Write Your Own Code

Reusing well‑tested libraries is advisable, yet sometimes custom code can dramatically speed development for special cases, though premature optimization can waste effort.

Premature Optimization

Optimizing code before knowing the real bottlenecks often leads to wasted time; a good rule of thumb is to focus on clear design first and optimize only where profiling shows a need.

Neglect

Experienced programmers often double‑check data before processing to avoid null‑pointer crashes, even though excessive checks can slow execution.

Inconsistency

Uniform coding styles aid readability, but enforcing strict consistency can increase complexity and cost, especially when different teams or legacy systems impose conflicting conventions.

Pursuing Fancy

Over‑emphasis on consistency can stifle innovation; adopting new libraries or APIs may disrupt old patterns but also keeps development interesting and progressive.

Break the Rules

Even large language models like Gemini acknowledge that creating advanced systems sometimes pushes beyond established best practices, highlighting that rule‑breaking can be a source of growth.