What to do with your inattention?

Question

Work organization

I have been working in the field for almost 3 years and I am constantly haunted by the feeling that I am terribly inattentive. Realizing how important this feature is for a developer, it becomes much more unpleasant. It comes to the point that I'm thinking of doing another kind of activity so as not to spoil the lives of clients with my jambs. Ironically, I work in a large financial company and for several releases (almost in a row) some jambs have surfaced on the production server. For a year now, I have been the only backend developer in the team since the team leader left and they still have not been able to find a replacement for him. Thus, reviews are carried out by colleagues from other teams, but due to the specifics of the work, they cannot check the tasks thoroughly, respectively, some jambs are reviewed and, moreover, are discovered too late. I don't know if anyone else has come across this situation. but I would really like to hear the opinion of colleagues in the shop, preferably senior developers who can evaluate what is happening. As for testing, I can say that it is not always possible to test everything, and even without testing, it always seems to me that I could avoid these mistakes if I were more attentive / thought more about tasks.

Edit: Answering a question on technology stack: Spring + Kafka + Oracle

Answer 1

Checklists.

Answer 2

So a review is not a test. We need a tester, ideally able to cover everything with automated tests.
You also need information about what kind of stack is used on the back. Let's say if this is JS, then it would not hurt to gradually introduce TypeScript there. Also, regardless of the language, you can implement practices from contract programming

Answer 3

If all people were such hypochondriac perfectionists, the world would have collapsed long ago from the absence of people with a tool in their hand.
You have a profession that is not associated with great risk, since programming and bugs are interconnected things. You're not a neurosurgeon who leaves instruments in a patient's skull.
PS: when you are the only backend developer in a company, the most relevant way to work is to make something bad and work, and then refactor and improve.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R455cuPsV4 - welcome.

Answer 4

Code coverage with tests. Yes, it is labor-intensive, but it gives a lot of advantages, including getting rid of unexpected jams. Moreover, the field of activity is quite serious.

Answer 5

Just quit and don't torture yourself

Answer 6

The cognitive resource of the brain is finite. RAM is limited and is able to hold 7+-2 objects at the same time. If there are a lot of tasks and you have to constantly switch, then everything is fine, as it should be.
A separate question - what to do with all this?
If the deadlines are always tight, and QA, as far as I understood from the description, is either underdeveloped, or there are none at all, respectively, the processes have not been set - this is a very big problem, but not for developers, but for management. Most likely they are off topic.
As colleagues suggest above, in normal teams, the QA process is set up properly and catches the lion's share of jambs at the testing stage. Well, yes, cover the code with tests, this, at least somehow, will help alleviate the situation.
Returning to the cognitive resource - you need to sleep normally and remove excess carbohydrates from the diet, add
physical activity and evening exercise before bed. You also need to stop stressing because of problems that are not in your competence and power. There is still no sense, and a valuable and very limited resource is being spent. You can't write a lot of good code on adrenaline and cortisol.
Perhaps you have an imposing temperament in general, and they are constantly trying to speed up and adjust you. In general, I would think about changing jobs.

Answer 7

I am not an expert in this matter, but I advise you to read or listen to the audio book "Why I get distracted. How to recognize attention deficit disorder in adults and children and what to do about it" 2019.
Authors: Edward Hallowell, John Ratey

Answer 8

Any skill develops with regular practice. In addition, you should refactor the code towards stability and write more unit tests, QA should increase the number of autotests and also develop mindfulness during regression, and management should understand that they have a 100% bass factor in the project. I don’t know what approach to project management is used in your team, but it’s probably worth adding periodic activity with analysis - why the error occurred, why it wasn’t detected, what can be done to prevent this from happening again, etc. Finally, no one is completely without bugs. The only question is how frequent and serious they are.