Something I learned about software development

While the title might suggest this post is something most non-technical people would find boring, let me reassure you this lesson has nothing to do with computers or software development. I just learned it while doing software development.

This post on The Daily WTF (Worse Than Failure) sparked it.

OK, so here is what I've learned:

If you have a problem to solve, ask yourself first if this problem is something that many others have had to solve in the past. Also ask yourself if, because of the extreme commonality of the problem, there might be a tool, or a ready-made solution out there, somewhere, that you might get your hands upon. And use.

Chances are good that if you have a nail to drive into a board, there's something already invented to do that. All you have to do is obtain the tool, and voila! you've solved your problem. I can't tell you how many times I've encountered some supposedly smart programmers who think there's no handy-dandy already-written routine available for comparing two dates. Or anything else really stupidly simple, like that. And I'll bet some of the more interesting, complicated problems also have solutions, as well. Particularly if they have been encountered before.

Yeah, I know my words of wisdom are pretty lame. But you'd be surprised how hard a really simple thing can be.