One of the recurring conversations in gatherings over a beer is the current trend, by many “developers”, of not really programming to client needs but simply using modules/components/plugins/…
Excessive use of components for very simple needs
This causes the final solution to be nothing more than an amalgamation of elements, many of which were not designed for that function, and others that are really not necessary, that only create the sensation that everything is solved, but as an “AS IS” solution. The kind where you don’t touch them, because we don’t know if something might fail, nor how, nor why.
Sometimes the solution entails more "dangers" than necessary
One of the examples is, in WordPress, the phrase “there’s a plugin that does it”, and we don’t realize that just adapting that plugin is more expensive than simply programming by hand the part of that plugin that we’ll really use. Many times it’s just creating a “Custom post type” in functions.php, and creating a couple of templates, but the plugin ends up being used. Many times modified.
This often applies to “if I’m very good with X, I’ll use X for everything”, and so we find that many times we understand that tool X is like a Swiss army knife, and it’s not. At this point, an example would be: “With Joomla you can make any website”, a phrase I’ve also heard about WordPress.
I’m of the opinion that we should be learning new technologies, not because they’re better than the ones we normally use, but because they can give us new tools for present and future developments.
Examples:
– A few years ago I chose SOLr over Elastic Search, among other reasons because there wasn’t a usable “More like this”, now I use Elastic Search more than SOLr.
– Also a long time ago I evaluated Angular, it was version 0.9.6, and it didn’t seem attractive to me due to browser requirements and the functionalities it offered, nowadays it’s what I use every day.
And so with many elements, with a clear determination: each problem requires its own tools, not mine.
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