Why Senior Engineers Read Tickets Before Writing a Single Line of Code

A fictional dialogue series on DEV Community uses an uncle-nephew conversation to explore how software is built from idea to production. In the first episode, an experienced engineer challenges his nephew — who has just completed React and RAG courses — to reconsider what separates junior from senior developers. The uncle argues that writing code is the final step of engineering, not the first, comparing it to a civil engineer who studies a river thoroughly before laying a single brick. Using a simple 'Add Wishlist Feature' ticket as a case study, he demonstrates how plain-language requirements hide dozens of unresolved decisions around authentication, data persistence, and edge cases. The key lesson is that engineers must surface ambiguities that affect database schemas or API contracts before coding, while making reasonable assumptions about minor details to keep the sprint moving.