Add daily email for 2025-01-08

Don't make assumptions

source/_daily_emails/2025-01-08.md

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+---
+title: Don't make assumptions
+date: 2025-01-08
+permalink: daily/2025/01/08/don-t-make-assumptions
+tags:
+  - software-development
+cta: call
+snippet: |
+  I recently caught myself making assumptions and creating new requirements in a codebase that no-one asked for.
+---
+
+I was recently writing code for a project and found myself making assumptions about what I was writing.
+
+I was creating my own requirements.
+
+Something no-one asked for.
+
+I was assuming a value was always going to be a certain number of digits long.
+
+I was writing code that verified this was true or throw an Exception.
+
+Until I found out that that one of the values wasn't the same length as the others.
+
+This could be an error in the data or it could correct.
+
+No-one told me the lengths were always going to be the same.
+
+So why was I checking it?
+
+Why was I adding bugs to the code?
+
+I've reverted the code that checks the length of the value and gone to find clarification.
+
+If it's an issue, it'll be fixed in the source data.
+
+If the lengths should all be the same, I'll potentially re-add the check.
+
+Until I'm sure, I'll only write what's needed to deliver the feature and stop adding my own requirements and assumptions.