2018-02-23 18:58:03 +00:00
|
|
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
|
|
created_at: '2010-08-07T15:40:03.000Z'
|
|
|
|
|
|
title: In Defense of Not-Invented-Here Syndrome (2001)
|
|
|
|
|
|
url: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000007.html
|
|
|
|
|
|
author: aycangulez
|
|
|
|
|
|
points: 66
|
|
|
|
|
|
story_text: ''
|
|
|
|
|
|
comment_text:
|
|
|
|
|
|
num_comments: 44
|
|
|
|
|
|
story_id:
|
|
|
|
|
|
story_title:
|
|
|
|
|
|
story_url:
|
|
|
|
|
|
parent_id:
|
|
|
|
|
|
created_at_i: 1281195603
|
|
|
|
|
|
_tags:
|
|
|
|
|
|
- story
|
|
|
|
|
|
- author_aycangulez
|
|
|
|
|
|
- story_1583717
|
|
|
|
|
|
objectID: '1583717'
|
2018-06-08 12:05:27 +00:00
|
|
|
|
year: 2001
|
2018-02-23 18:58:03 +00:00
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
---
|
2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
|
|
|
|
Time for a pop quiz.
|
2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
|
|
|
|
|
2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1. Code Reuse is:
|
2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
|
|
|
|
|
2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
|
|
|
|
> a) Good
|
|
|
|
|
|
> b) Bad
|
2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
|
|
|
|
|
2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
|
|
|
|
2\. Reinventing the Wheel is:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
> a) Good
|
|
|
|
|
|
> b) Bad
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
3\. The Not-Invented-Here Syndrome is:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
> a) Good
|
|
|
|
|
|
> b) Bad
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Of course, everybody knows that you should always leverage other
|
|
|
|
|
|
people’s work. The correct answers are, of course, 1(a) 2(b) 3(b).
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Right?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Not so fast, there\!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Not-Invented-Here Syndrome is considered a classic management
|
|
|
|
|
|
pathology, in which a team refuses to use a technology that they didn’t
|
|
|
|
|
|
create themselves. People with NIH syndrome are obviously just being
|
|
|
|
|
|
petty, refusing to do what’s in the best interest of the overall
|
|
|
|
|
|
organization because they can’t find a way to take credit. (Right?) The
|
|
|
|
|
|
Boring Business History Section at your local megabookstore is rife with
|
|
|
|
|
|
stories about stupid teams that spend millions of dollars and twelve
|
|
|
|
|
|
years building something they could have bought at Egghead for $9.99.
|
|
|
|
|
|
And everybody who has paid any attention whatsoever to three decades of
|
|
|
|
|
|
progress in computer programming knows that Reuse is the Holy Grail of
|
|
|
|
|
|
all modern programming systems.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Right. Well, that’s what I thought, too. So when I was the program
|
|
|
|
|
|
manager in charge of the first implementation of Visual Basic for
|
|
|
|
|
|
Applications, I put together a careful coalition of four, count them,
|
|
|
|
|
|
four different teams at Microsoft to get custom dialog boxes in Excel
|
|
|
|
|
|
VBA. The idea was complicated and fraught with interdependencies. There
|
|
|
|
|
|
was a team called AFX that was working on some kind of dialog editor.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Then we would use this brand new code from the OLE group which let you
|
|
|
|
|
|
embed one app inside another. And the Visual Basic team would provide
|
|
|
|
|
|
the programming language behind it. After a week of negotiation I got
|
|
|
|
|
|
the AFX, OLE, and VB teams to agree to this in principle.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I stopped by Andrew Kwatinetz’s office. He was my manager at the time
|
|
|
|
|
|
and taught me everything I know. “The Excel development team will never
|
|
|
|
|
|
accept it,” he said. “You know their motto? ‘Find the dependencies — and
|
|
|
|
|
|
eliminate them.’ They’ll never go for something with so many
|
|
|
|
|
|
dependencies.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In-ter-est-ing. I hadn’t known that. I guess that explained why Excel
|
|
|
|
|
|
had its own C compiler.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By now I’m sure many of my readers are rolling on the floor laughing.
|
|
|
|
|
|
“Isn’t Microsoft stupid,” you’re thinking, “they refused to use other
|
|
|
|
|
|
people’s code and they even had their own compiler just for one
|
|
|
|
|
|
product.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Not so fast, big boy\! The Excel team’s ruggedly independent mentality
|
|
|
|
|
|
also meant that they always shipped on time, their code was of uniformly
|
|
|
|
|
|
high quality, and they had a compiler which, back in the 1980s,
|
|
|
|
|
|
generated pcode and could therefore run unmodified on Macintosh’s 68000
|
|
|
|
|
|
chip as well as Intel PCs. The pcode also made the executable file about
|
|
|
|
|
|
half the size that Intel binaries would have been, which loaded faster
|
|
|
|
|
|
from floppy disks and required less RAM.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
“Find the dependencies — and eliminate them.” When you’re working on a
|
|
|
|
|
|
really, really good team with great programmers, everybody else’s code,
|
|
|
|
|
|
frankly, is bug-infested garbage, and nobody else knows how to ship on
|
|
|
|
|
|
time. When you’re a cordon bleu chef and you need fresh lavender, you
|
|
|
|
|
|
grow it yourself instead of buying it in the farmers’ market, because
|
|
|
|
|
|
sometimes they don’t have fresh lavender or they have old lavender which
|
|
|
|
|
|
they pass off as fresh.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Indeed during the recent dotcom mania a bunch of quack business writers
|
|
|
|
|
|
suggested that the company of the future would be totally virtual — just
|
|
|
|
|
|
a trendy couple sipping Chardonnay in their living room outsourcing
|
|
|
|
|
|
everything. What these hyperventilating “visionaries” overlooked is that
|
|
|
|
|
|
the market pays for value added. Two yuppies in a living room buying an
|
|
|
|
|
|
e-commerce engine from company A and selling merchandise made by company
|
|
|
|
|
|
B and warehoused and shipped by company C, with customer service from
|
|
|
|
|
|
company D, isn’t honestly adding much value. In fact, if you’ve ever had
|
|
|
|
|
|
to outsource a critical business function, you realize that outsourcing
|
|
|
|
|
|
is hell. Without direct control over customer service, you’re going to
|
|
|
|
|
|
get nightmarishly bad customer service — the kind people write about in
|
|
|
|
|
|
their weblogs when they tried to get someone, anyone, from some phone
|
|
|
|
|
|
company to do even the most basic thing. If you outsource fulfillment,
|
|
|
|
|
|
and your fulfillment partner has a different idea about what constitutes
|
|
|
|
|
|
prompt delivery, your customers are not going to be happy, and there’s
|
|
|
|
|
|
nothing you can do about it, because it took 3 months to find a
|
|
|
|
|
|
fulfillment partner in the first place, and in fact, you won’t even know
|
|
|
|
|
|
that your customers are unhappy, because they can’t talk to you, because
|
|
|
|
|
|
you’ve set up an outsourced customer service center with the explicit
|
|
|
|
|
|
aim of not listening to your own customers. That e-commerce engine you
|
|
|
|
|
|
bought? There’s no way it’s going to be as flexible as what Amazon does
|
|
|
|
|
|
with obidos, which they wrote themselves. (And if it is, then Amazon has
|
|
|
|
|
|
no advantage over their competitors who bought the same thing). And no
|
|
|
|
|
|
off-the-shelf web server is going to be as blazingly fast as what Google
|
|
|
|
|
|
does with their hand-coded, hand-optimized server.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This principle, unfortunately, seems to be directly in conflict with the
|
|
|
|
|
|
ideal of “code reuse good — reinventing wheel bad.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The best advice I can offer:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
> **If it’s a core business function — do it yourself, no matter what.**
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Pick your core business competencies and goals, and do those in house.
|
|
|
|
|
|
If you’re a software company, writing excellent code is how you’re going
|
|
|
|
|
|
to succeed. Go ahead and outsource the company cafeteria and the CD-ROM
|
|
|
|
|
|
duplication. If you’re a pharmaceutical company, write software for drug
|
|
|
|
|
|
research, but don’t write your own accounting package. If you’re a web
|
|
|
|
|
|
accounting service, write your own accounting package, but don’t try to
|
|
|
|
|
|
create your own magazine ads. If you have customers, never outsource
|
|
|
|
|
|
customer service.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
If you’re developing a computer game where the plot is your competitive
|
|
|
|
|
|
advantage, it’s OK to use a third party 3D library. But if cool 3D
|
|
|
|
|
|
effects are going to be your distinguishing feature, you had better roll
|
|
|
|
|
|
your own.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The only exception to this rule, I suspect, is if your own people are
|
|
|
|
|
|
more incompetent than everyone else, so whenever you try to do anything
|
|
|
|
|
|
in house, it’s botched up. Yes, there are plenty of places like this. If
|
|
|
|
|
|
you’re in one of them, I can’t help
|
|
|
|
|
|
you.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
[Discuss](http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=112)
|
