4 Tips to Avoid Rushing to Code (and Building the Wrong Thing)

You spent days on your JIRA ticket... only to be told to redo it after your team lead reviewed your code? A few years ago, I was working on a hotel management tool. My team lead asked me to redo an apparently trivial task. I had to store emails before sending them. It wasn't a full rework, but I had to change my approach. We had completely different expectations from the same task. Two days of work almost wasted. If I had only asked one single question before starting... "Hey, I'm doing it like this, are we on the same page?" If you're like me, eager to jump into the code, confident in your solution, hold your horses and follow these four tips: #1. Always ask why. Don't start coding if you don't understand what needs to be done—Especially relevant these days of AI-assisted coding. Before coding, ask: Why this task? What's the real problem? Why solve it now? #2. Read the existing code before starting. Your changes might be simple, unless you have to refactor some legacy code first. If y