A few years ago, my co-worker gave me an unforgettable piece of advice.

I was just starting to get interested in Web Development, and had been running myself ragged trying to achieve web based, interactive games. But, like most beginners, I was making a lot of mistakes: "hardcoding", repeating myself, and creating unorganized code.

Until one day, my co-worker said to me:

"Dude, code like you're lazy."

That day, my whole life changed.

At first, it sounded really bad. I mean, I was someone who prided myself on hard work and determination, but what the advice REALLY meant was "code smarter, not harder". Once, I realized this, the coding lightbulb was finally illuminated in my brain.

Sure - there was a learning curve to this - but taking the extra time to familiarize myself with good coding principles started saving me hours of unnecessary work. Whenever you feel like a piece of code is really arduous or particularly redundant - it probably is, and there is a more streamlined way to do it.

It's in those moments, when you feel like you're on an assembly line, mindlessly adding bulky lines of superfluous code - say to yourself, "code like you're lazy". Take a step back, reassess what you're doing, and code smarter not harder.