Think before you code!

Consult with experts before you code!

This is a problem I encounter frequently lately…
Developers write infrastructure code with no real supervision and only when problems arise and its too late to really fix anything (because a lot of application code is already based on the current infrastructure) experts are called to advise…

A company I work at decided to develop a generic UI code for both its desktop application and its web application.
The developers working on this code had no web experience so the code was built with desktop orientation (without considering the fact that the web is stateless). The web developers had to resort to all sort of hacks to use the code.

Finally, when the web team had too many bugs on their hands I was called to take a look…
We had to redesign the UI infrastructure (thus creating a separated web UI infrastructure) and rewrite all the code to work with the new infrastructure.

Conclusion:

• Think before you code!
• Experts are being paid to consult, teach and review code among other things. Use them!
• Infrastructure code requires special care and supervision.
  There should always be a supervisor who can see the big picture and make sure it fits all the teams using it.