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| title | date | permalink | tags | cta | snippet | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Let someone else do the work | 2024-03-26 | daily/2024/03/26/let-someone-else-do-the-work |
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~ | Why would I write something myself if there's already code available that solves my problem? |
Yesterday, I was investigating a CSS issue.
It's a known issue due to some legacy code in the website's CSS that I'd fixed before but now needed to extend.
Instead of blindly following the same path and extending my previous fix, I decided to rethink the problem and my approach.
I re-read my documentation and re-reviewed potential solutions I'd evaluated previously.
I decided to take a different approach to solving the problem and found an open-source plugin that someone else had written that gave me the functionality I needed instead of writing it from scratch.
I read the code and did a short spike to see if it worked with the existing configuration.
After some experimentation, I got it to work and added it to the project.
Here's the Thing
The plugin I used was only 34 lines of code, but these are lines I didn't need to write or will need to maintain.
If it works, why would I write it myself?
I'd rather use what someone else has written and contribute if I find a bug or need a new feature.
That's the benefit of open-source software, and why I use Drupal, PHP, Sculpin, Tailwind CSS, Nix, and others.