The problem with finding a new job, as a programmer, is that you'll have to read and become familiar with a new codebase. Most programmers I know love coding, but hate reading other people's code.
“Indeed, the ratio of time spent reading versus writing is well over 10 to 1. We are constantly reading old code as part of the effort to write new code. ...[Therefore,] making it easy to read makes it easier to write.”
― Robert C. Martin, Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
That’s… interesting. Stephen King advice for aspiring writers is to read a lot. I’s say same goes for developers. Even if you read a lousy code you can at least anslyse what makes it lousy and how can it be improved. Reading good code will reinforce the understanding what good code is and might give some ideas for the future.
Hating reading other’s code is a sign if the still novice programmer. Imho, of course.
Reading code I perceive as "lousy" and sometimes stepping through it with a debugger has often been a great learning experience for me. Sometimes I even realize that I'm wrong, and "lousy" design decisions were actually chosen to solve some tricky problem. More often it was just written in a hurry, or written before more modern libraries were available, but reading it still helps me improve my brain's "pattern-matching engine" for next time I see something similar.
To expand on that, I really like this quote by William Faulkner, and I think it really extends nicely to coding as well:
“Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.
Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.”
Especially if someone is looking for a raise. At least where I've work, the more senior engineers (i.e. the ones who have demonstrated that they should get higher pay) are the ones who are constantly evaluating new ideas and new architectures, reviewing other peoples code (in open-source, these people are committers, not just contributors), collaborating with other projects that integrate with ours, etc.
I get the point about everything being 100% new at a new job being more uncomfortable than the incremental newness you should constantly be experiencing. But still - if you do have a hard time justifying a raise, remember that you're asking the company to bet more money on your. Bet on yourself first, step outside your comfort zone a little, and try lead in a way you haven't much before.
But the fact is that it's just much much easier to convert ideas to code than code to ideas. It's also much easier to convert ideas to English than English to ideas, so better documentation probably helps, but it still sucks. (E.g. consider reading any sizable IEEE standard. It's all there, carefully described, but it's still a lot of work to understand.)
So yeah, many people prefer writing code to reading code, me including.
And BTW this is one thing that my university didn't quite get right. They focused a whole lot on writing code, but not as much on reading. The latter of course proved to be much much more important in my daily job.
Not being exposed to big unfamiliar codebases may be comfortable, but dealing with unfamiliar code is a skill you will most probably eventually need, as few jobs are eternal, and not practicing for years will make for a painful landing.
