Reading code in the morning
A habit borrowed from a senior engineer that quietly changed how I work.
The first half hour at my laptop is for reading code, not writing it. I borrowed this from a senior engineer who insisted on it during a project years ago. I argued with him at the time. He was right.
What I read#
Yesterday's diff, even if it was mine. A file I will touch today, even if I think I remember it. One file from a library I depend on, picked roughly at random. Three minutes per file is enough.
The point is not deep comprehension. The point is to arrive at the keyboard with the shape of the code in my head, so the first thing I write is already in conversation with the rest of it.
What changed#
The bugs I introduce in the first two hours of the day dropped, then disappeared. I do not have a clean measurement, just the absence of the recurring "what did past me do" moment.
The other effect#
I write less code than I used to, because the half hour of reading often reveals that the thing I was about to write already exists. This is the result I did not expect, and it is the one that has held the longest.