Fear of showing errors or bugs
I have been a software engineer for quite some time now. Different roles in different companies. Evolved differently in each company. I had many ups and downs. Tried to overcome my insecurities like everyone else in the market. Sometimes I succeeded, most of the times I failed — but never and I mean never I let my guard down and let someone see my mistakes.
You may ask why? Now I ask myself that too. The answer is plain and simple — to not be judged and laughed at.
When did all of us become so fearful of being judged by our errors instead of owning them and find solutions?
Of course this applies to all domains out there, but here I am only referring to software engineering.
While I was starting to learn coding and computer science, I watched a multitude of videos on YouTube on programming languages or some How to tutorial, I have never seen anyone show coding errors. All the videos, all the articles are so well clipped that I felt somehow, I am the only one that encounters errors or generates them.
I read many stories about failure and empowering messages on how to overcome it. None of them made me more confident about showing how to fail.
I tried speaking events like this one that I am doing in April https://event.geekle.us/node#speakears . Some of them at first (from my POV only) were a big epic failure. I felt that I did not deliver the right message. I did not explain well. The sound did not work, and I did not respond to every question on earth for that subject.
Does that make me incompetent? Who said that all the speakers should know or have all the answers?
No, and nobody has all the answers.
I started to teach and mentor future Software engineers and at first I started to prepare everything in advance and even dry run the code more than a couple of times to show them that everything works.
Such a bad approach.
Did that make me better? Did I learn from this experience? Was I a better teacher because I showed them perfection?
No.
After my son was born, I never had that free time to prepare everything and make it run smoothly. So, I did the next best thing I could: start to teach and do the coding sessions on the fly. Many bugs and errors appeared while designing and building the apps. Some laughed at me, some mocked me, some thought that I was not that good (including myself).
The outcome of exposing myself and my insecurities and showing that things never go according to plan gave my mentees a stronger mindset. They learned by fixing my errors with me. They had more confidence in proposing solutions and felt included in the process. At my speaking events everyone felt included and encouraged to ask questions and also answer them.
When you’re learning or even when you’re experienced, it often feels like you’re the only one dealing with bugs, errors, or things not going according to plan. The reality is that no one is immune to this, but culture often doesn’t encourage transparency about it. Tutorials and guides are often curated to show the “perfect path,” leaving out the messier parts, the roadblocks, the debugging.
But those moments of failure, the errors, and the trial-and-error process are where real learning happens. It’s a shame that the fear of judgment has turned into such a barrier to sharing those experiences.
I would like to see more errors and bugs in the future. I know it is very hard in a world tailored to admire perfection and with the AI bubble making us think that we will be replaced and obsolete.
Remember, software engineering, at its core, is about problem-solving, and no one is solving problems without stumbling through a few wrong turns first.
Let’s show everything as it is — with plenty of failure, bugs and errors. Because of those we can rise and become better for the future.