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Fear in programming can lead to conservative decision-making and worse software. Tools like version control and testing, as well as processes like blameless postmortems, can help reduce fear and improve programming outcomes.

Fear makes you a worse programmer

Fear of retribution (and blameless postmortems)

I definitely resonate with this, sometimes I just make little changes that I know won’t cause everything to come crashing down instead of doing the one big thing that will make everything dramatically better. The part about tests is what I’m actively working on. I read somewhere that your first 2000 tests all suck so I’m just trying to practice my test writing muscle as much as possible.

Thank you for the post!
I remember my first job in outsource company. I had 0 experience and I was working on a project full of smelly code. One little change might cause a big issue. My manager was following the blame approach. As a result, I was spending ~30 minutes fixing a bug and 4 hours doing manual testing. Anyway, something went wrong because I was a trainee and didn’t understand half of the code, and I worked 12 hours.
Since then I have had this fear sometimes, but testing helps a lot. It saves my time and the company’s money in the long term.
So even if someone blames you - pass this through you, do blameless postmortems by yourself, gain experience, and write tests. Or find a better manager or job😀