Website Development & Maintenance by Syosoft.com

Ask any developer what they dread most about their job. My guess is the same things most people dread: redundancy and their boss. Thankfully, the former is much easier to correct.

The advantages are probably too numerous to name, I'll outline the few I see as the most important.

Clients want, need, and deserve reliability. This means time tested code and a development team knows that code as if they wrote it (and hopefully they did). Developers need well written, thought out, and profitable code they can present to clients with confidence. Enter code libraries.

Finding code is easy - code repositories are everywhere. It seems people are posting their works as a service (and possibly bragging rights) to their colleagues. Unfortunately, this creates uneducated developers who are more familiar with ctrl+c & ctrl+v than they are working through a problem using the various research channels available to them.

Right, back to the point: advantages.

The single biggest benefit is speed. Script libraries jump start an application. They allow developers to quickly setup shop and get down to the creative part of the project. This alone is enough to stop reinventing the wheel and build your own reusable code base - even if it is collecting and analyzing various freely available scripts.

Second, reliability. The reason I think speed trumps reliability is because code can always be improved. Once that jump start has happened, design flaws in the library will stick out like a sore thumb and can be readdressed. As a script library matures, the original code becomes much more robust and if all goes well, more reliable. Very few, if any, pieces of code can be defined as "perfect," however, many scripts can be considered usable, scalable and "bug" free.

Lastly, knowledge. Becoming familiar with several scripts, functions, and classes is crucial in quickly identifying the best suited angle of attack, or at what point a script might be bottle-necking. One of the worst feelings in the world is to revisit a web site or application you've previously developed only to find yourself lost in the code. Contrast that with the feeling of revisiting a web site or application you've devloped using a framework you've actively worked with for years. Freeing.