Re-use the wheel, don’t re-program it!

[image in header courtesy Christiaan Colen via google image search]

I use programming to simplify my life. If I need something done, I usually try to code for it. Itsy bitsy programs that do small computations and give me the result.

I may have got the answer manually in a shorter span of time, but that’s how we programmers are. :P

Anyway, since this is how I am used to code, I also love coding for bigger problems. Not necessarily problems, but bigger circumstances that can be simplified by a larger piece of code?—?read apps.

However I seem to sort of end up trying to code everything up myself and eventually I procrastinate and put it on a backburner which will never see the light of the day. This shows as I have tens of ideas and pet projects that I want to develop, but not a single one has seen light of day.

It was not until very recently that it hit me why this is happening. Whenever I think back on the idea, I find that it is a great idea and there is no other such solution available in the market today. So it will not only help me, but will also help a lot of other people simplify their day to day lives.

So it is not like the idea is some random one and no one will care if it is not present. I realize the value of the idea and how cool it would be if it sees light of day.

The reason that I am not able to follow through on the idea is one?—?distraction of course. I am not committed enough to my own ideas to follow through on it. The other reason simply is that I am trying to do too much. I am trying to re-invent the wheel and create each small piece of functionality by myself from scratch.

I should be looking up libraries and modules that I can reuse and build up to my idea. I should focus on the functionality and not on the individual lines of code. What I am doing is a school coders method. I need to think bigger and see what is the best way to get my idea to market. If there is something that could be optimized at the code level, then I can get to it later.

I think this is what is affecting me. Maybe this is what is affecting a lot of programmers out there.

If you want to do something, then try to look for already available solutions. Maybe you will already find a library or app (open-source of course) that covers 80% of your use case and you can build on top of it. Maybe you will find 4–5 pieces of code that you can ‘glue’ together to build that dream app of yours.

How easy would that be as opposed to building everything yourself from scratch?

I am going to start following this approach going forward. Let me see what I can churn up in the next months by doing this diligently.