I have lost count of the times I have heard a developer exclaim ‘but I could write that in X days’ when discussing adopting an existing piece of technology developed somewhere else. This is usually given as a reason not to adopt an existing external solution but to instead write a custom solution with [...]
The ‘Golden Hammer‘ is a very common anti-pattern, which can be best summed up by the phrase “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail“. This anti-pattern occurs when the perpetrator has typically learned a particularly powerful technique or design (the hammer), which they then go on to apply blindly to [...]
A very common trap to fall into while implementing a new system or feature is to add functionality to ‘future proof’ your code for a use case that you imagine in may be required in the future. The future for the purposes of this post is any time that is not in your current development [...]
There seems to be something about programming that makes software engineers seek the perfect solution to a given problem or design brief.
Something that drives them to keep adding things to their program or library until they kill it with love for example Microsoft Word has a gazillion features but until recently (its has improved a [...]
It would seem that as a profession Software Engineers when left to their own devices will attempt to make a perfect solution to a problem, rather than accepting a working solution. This may sound innocent enough as being 75% perfect (with a working solution) is usually not too painful in time and effort to achieve, [...]