Sometimes it is hard to start a blog post, you have all what you want to say in your head but you cannot find the “Program/Main” or entry point of your thoughts. So here I am, I will just list what is in my mind and hopefully it will make sense at the end.

Ok so, the app you are working on it is built with different tools and/or frameworks and you are asked to implement a new feature. The first thought is: “Let’s see what this framework has to offer”, or “let’s see if there is already a widget in this toolbox I am using here,… etc.”. But when you start digging into it you realize that there is something similar but not quite what you need, or the design is completely off, or the back-end communication is not fitting your model. So you dig dipper, you start hacking into the widget/control or other feature/functionality and you say: “…ah, ok this work this way but I can change it here and make it work…” then you find another obstacle and you solve it and so on. Did you ever get to the end of this process with a result that the only thing it reminds you of is Frankenstein? Yes, something like a patch work, something that…. if you do not have enough “electricity” you cannot give it “life”, something that can break any minute.

At that point you spent hours if not days through documentation and testing and writing code, and you think:”Is it worthy?….shouldn’t I just build it?”. Well , maybe. But then thinking of: “do not reinvent the wheel!!”, “use and re-use existing code”, “someone for sure have already done the work”, “isn’t what Google is for?….” one is starting to have doubts. So I guess my point is: when do we stop searching and start building? Great question isn’t it?

I guess sometimes we go too far in our search for the solution because we think that out there there is always someone better then us, someone that has already thought about it and made a great product. So is it a problem of self-confidence? But then if you have too much of it you end up putting too many hours into it and your boss will complain. So again, it is hard to find the right balance.

I leave it at this and I am open to ideas and suggestion. Tell me what your mental process is and share it with the community.