Binary Code

Ryan’s Tech Blog delves into the “why” of Microsoft creating a front-end client to CodePlex, Microsoft’s version of the venerable, much-loved SourceForge. In his post Ryan hits one truism - perhaps the central truism - of writing new software right on the head:

It’s more fun to write new code than read old code, but this fun wears off. After a certain initial momentum creating your new tool, you will inevitably come to a realization “this is going to take me for-fucking-ever”. Unless your itch is particularly strong, you’ll probably quit….

That’s what makes frameworks like Rails, Qt and .Net so incredibly valuable and fun to use: they, if they’re any good, take care of the mundane 90% of the code that will take for-fucking-ever leaving the developer to spend 100% of their time on the other 10% of code… that will take for-fucking-ever also but at least it’s the part of the project that can hopefully differentiate your online social widget mash-up app from the other guy’s.

Well observed Ryan. Well observed.