I made the following notes while reading The Pragmatic Programmer, 20th Anniversary Edition, chapter 4, Tip 36: You Can’t Write Perfect Software:
Perfect Software doesn’t exist
Everyone thinks they’re the only good driver on the planet, yet we all still drive defensively. That’s exactly how we should approach writing software.
We are constantly interfacing with other people’s code - code that might not live up to our high standards…
At a minimum, two people work on the same code: you today, and you a few months from now. Look back at code you wrote a while ago and you’ll probably find yourself scratching your head — no one writes perfect code, not even you and I.
Test what you write. Make sure you’re as confident as possible in what you deliver.
Stick to small steps.
I can’t stress this enough, and it’s harder than it sounds: write code in small increments.
Write, test, commit, open a pull request. Rinse and repeat.
It sounds like more work, but in my experience, 10 small pull requests get reviewed and merged faster than one big one with the same changes combined.