I recently read an article about identifying programmers based on their programming “style“. One thing that was interesting about the study sited in the article was that the algorithm for determining who wrote the code was more accurate for mature programmers in that they developed unique styles and were less likely to rely on pre-existing code “snippets”.
Time to reconsider
Starting
any sort of work is a balance between applying known patterns and adopting new strategies. Adopting new strategies, or at least considering them, takes time and therefore you only want to do so when warranted. The question is “How do I honestly evaluate if a new solution is required”. I would put forth there are 4 questions that you need to ask yourself honestly
- Is this a new type of problem: If you are working on your 101st iteration of the same type of problem chances are your validated solution can be applied.
- Is it new in whole or in parts: If it is something new, start scoping how much of the problem is “new”
- How well do I understand the new part: This is the hard part, do you understand, in outline at least, what is new in the system? Until you can say “Yes” to functional understanding you should not move forward.
- Can the new parts be treated in isolation: Once you understand what is new and what “known” you can determine the degree to which the new parts affect the behavior of the known parts.
Why ask What?
Life is to short to spend time reinventing the wheel for known problems, at the same time the quality of your work is dependent on the understanding of your problems. By knowing when new solutions need to be applied you can minimize the amount of needless reinvention of the wheel.
The questions listed above are intended to spark a “is this a wheel” understanding. What are your metacognition questions?
