I’ve written an extension so you don’t have to Google

Today I have stumbled upon a great article by Austin Z. Henley called "Can you make a basic web app without googling?" read it

The article pretty much sums up what is, in a way, wrong with software development nowadays. Not looking far away, i can tell you how my work looked like in some of teams I have worked in. To add almost any feature I had to Google for technical nuances to find the solution I needed for the given stack. Than I had to look at the documentation, source code, ask several coworkers for additional information. Just to add one little thing.

For a lot of developers out there it seems like a normal way of doing their job. Spending 90% of time on preparations and information gathering, and 10% on the actual implementation. The proportion becomes even worse if there is someone who has to make a business decision or you have to wait for other things to happen first.

But the question is, if there is really no other way to approach problems? With several teams i have created during my career, we were able to set up a working environment that lowers preparation costs. The most important way to improve the productivity of a team, is to give every member the right to improve project, either by refactoring, adding tests, comments, or documentation each time, it took too long to find the answer. Contrary - any limitations make developers either not note their know-how anywhere or putting them in places they are not looking up later.