Originally posted on 12 June 2017, at: https://blog.gramener.com/the-power-of-defaults/

Image Courtesy: http://theartofdoing.com/the-google-doodler/

Why does your favorite toothpaste advertisement show a brush full of paste when a fraction of it will solve the purpose?

Defaults have immense power in a way we don’t often realize. The default price of the vegetable you get at the mandi is Rs. 13 unless you bargain. The default compensation you are offered to work is Rs. X unless you negotiate. The default options in your Facebook or Quora account is to send reminder emails prompting your active participation on their social network. The default option in many smartphone applications is to use your location, even for a messaging application. Drawing a similar parallel to programming environments, the default settings in your coding environment offer you only so much until you configure further.

Defaults have the power to improve (similarly worsen) productivity/life exponentially. Consider the below process that developers at Gramener, in general, follow.

Step 1) Write code, test functionality

Step 2) Push to a remote repository post successful testing

Step 3) Check build errors from continuous integration

Step 4) Update code and repeat from Step 2 until the latest build passes the tests.

Build errors could occur due to several reasons (more on this, in the next blog post)

1) Exceeding default line length

2) Unused variables

3) Redundant code

4) Indentation

5) Trailing whitespace

6) Other PEP8 recommendations: 2 blank lines before function definition, over-indentation, blank lines at file end etc.

There are ways to catch these before you push the code. Python Lint plug-in helps ensure the above checks. Javascript has a similar Linter plug-in.

Defaults have a way to improve people’s lives. Whether you are building dashboards or writing software or training new talent or buying a new product, remember the power of defaults, leverage them and improve the productivity (your chances).