A lot of developers I know keep bitching about how their team isn’t as passionate as they’d like it to be, or about their boss not letting them do things like it should be done. They get into this habit and never advance in the right direction because something is holding them back. I know this situation well, I’m usually one of these guys.

In the spirit of Positivember I’d like to tell you a secret. You can stop whining and start improving. You don’t have to wait for all the stars to align. That cliché about changes starting from yourself is actually right.

I’ve heard almost every complaint in the book:

“My teammates don’t write tests.” “They won’t let me have a continuous integration server.” “I can’t use Git.” “My boss hates it when I make a lot of commits.” “I was told not to write tests.” “We’re not doing agile development.” “I can’t do pair programming.”

If everything above applies, or you really have lots of problems like these, just quit. A developer that really cares about these things usually can find a better job easily. But, if it’s only some of these, remember that no work is perfect. There will always be suboptimal stuff to live with. The trick is not to be all bitter about it, but to actually try and make changes happen, slowly, so you still have fun.

Most if not all of these problems are things you can work around, technologically, mentally or socially. If you just stick to your good ways, you’ll eventually get some followers too.

Step up and realize that everything can start by you and your habits. An Autonomous Craftsmanship Core as I like to call it. Sometimes, you core will seem so awesome from the outside that people will join in on some of your practices. Sometimes it will go unnoticed and you will happily go on programming better and better.

I will blog more on tackling some of the problems I mentioned above, but as a starting point I recommend Apprenticeship Patterns and Driving Technical Change. These great books help a lot in accepting that fact you should take matters into your own hands, and stop bitching.

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