Software development is a loser’s game

Ben "The Hosk" Hosking
5 min readMar 29, 2021

Great code doesn’t save you, but bad code will kill you #HoskWisdom

I’m not saying developers are losers but most software developers are not beating software development, software development is beating them.

The reason developers struggle is because they don’t know what game they are playing or the best tactics to use.

You need to know what game of software development, so you can play effectively.

In the creative process of writing code, it’s not if the code will be wrong, it’s when the code will be wrong and fixing it in the easiest way possible.

Winner and losers

In the essay Loser’s Game by Charles Ellis, he notes that professional tennis is a winner’s game where players win points. Amateur Tennis is won using a different strategy of keeping the ball alive and letting your opponent beat himself.

“In expert tennis, about 80 per cent of the points are won; in amateur tennis, about 80 per cent of the points are lost. In other words, professional tennis is a Winner’s Game — the final outcome is determined by the activities of the winner — and amateur tennis is a Loser’s Game — the final outcome is determined by the activities of the loser. The two games are, in their…

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Ben "The Hosk" Hosking

Technology philosopher | Software dev → Solution architect | Avid reader | Life long learner