How working in Germany helped me to write better code

I moved from the Netherlands to Germany in 2013 and the transition was not that hard because the Dutch and Germans share a lot of culture and language.

But there are differences between our people! And one of them is very helpful for my everyday work as a trainer and software engineer.

"Ungenaue Angaben"

If you ever attended a meeting in the Netherlands, you might have noticed they can be a bit fuzzy. Henk uses the word "things" a lot. Marieke likes to say "stuff". Bert expresses amounts with "very big" and "really small". And we dutch love diminutives! A "thing" becomes a "thingy".

Sweet but not helpful

Although this discussion style is very sweet, it does not always lead straight to the goal. I don't know why we do it and I only noticed it when moving to Germany.

In Germany, people speak differently. They are more exact. You can see an example of this in interviews. When asked for exact numbers, years and names, they are presented. You won't hear "Mr. I forgot his name" often in German podcasts.

Do your homework

Another example is in meetings. In the beginning, this was very annoying to me. The flow of any discussion is broken when you constantly hear questions like: "How much exactly?", or "So which one is it? A or B?". But after a while, you start to value the exactness. The Germans like exact information!

And the result is this: It makes you do your homework before going into meetings, sending emails or start to write code.

Imagine the path of execution

So how do you prepare for it? One of my German colleagues told me how he did it. Whether he needs to prepare for a meeting or a complete project, he takes a moment to imagine the path of execution in his head.

The more you are an expert on things, the easier it is to forget details. By taking the needed steps in your head to get to the goal, you can collect answers before anyone can ask the question.

How did this make me a better coder?

Once tried out this technique myself, I was able to break down my work in details I would never have thought of. It allowed me to estimate and sketch out the work without writing a single line of Python or C#.

But it gets better! Once you come up with a plan, you have to communicate it to the team. And what good is a great plan if you cannot explain it well?

And this brings me to the second tip of my colleague.

Always learn the exact terminology

Learning exact terminology can be quite a challenge if you are a self-taught, non-native english speaker. But I trained myself to always lookup the exact name of concepts I would like to use.

Suddenly you can explain the plan on the next abstraction level. You can even discuss code without having to look at code!

From bluffing to convincing

I went from bluffing my way through a meeting to convincing with arguments. And by using exact information, you show that you did your homework and prevent many of the objections or questions you would have gotten, if you had not walked the path of execution in your head.

And the cool thing is that you can also use these techniques when you work alone. Because just like convincing others, you yourself have to be convinced you are going in the right direction!

And in the end, for us software developers, this leads to the most important thing: Write the best code we can.

How to start?

If you want to try our this yourself, start with small things. From going to the supermarket, paying you bills, walking the dog, take a moment and think about how that will look like. Use the correct terms for all the things your see. Train yourself to do this with simple things and get better at it every day!