Are you overloaded with developer tools and plugins?
In world where developers have thousands of tools and plugins to aid them in their development outside of IDE’s like Visual Studio or Eclipse, do you want to know how many I use? The answer is plain and simple, none.
I know some of you probably think I am crazy and wonder how I could possibly do my job effectively, but I find that the tools generally slow me down. I’ve downloaded several plugins for Firefox like the web developer toolbar and Firebug, but in each case they have never been very useful to me. I have found that with a little bit of forethought and logical thinking I can get my development projects done more quickly and accurately than those who rely on tools to get through their development process. Because of this I am a very effective developer since I often anticipate issues and potential problems before coding myself into a corner. And when issues do arise I can find and fix the issue within a short period of time.
I have also found that I can generally do most tasks much faster than my coworkers who are reliant on developer tools and plugins. It makes me wonder if the developers who are heavily reliant on these tools are actually slowing themselves down and hurting themselves in the end. Do these tools actually help people become better all around developers or do they act as a crutch? I am sure there are very useful tools out there and I look forward to finding one that I actually use heavily, but until then I will stay tool free and rely on my brain to get me through projects.
To answer your question “Do these tools actually help people become better all around developers or do they act as a crutch?” I think it depends on where you’re coming from.
If you’ve learned to develop without the tools and know how to fix any problems, as you say, using your brain, then I think the tools can be of some help. I think in some cases these tools can speed up, if not development time than certainly debugging time if used correctly. But this is not the case for all circumstances and all tools.
However, if you learned to develop with the tools, and only know how to fix any problems with the use of the tools, then that’s when I think you’re in trouble. If this is the case then you’re not really developing, but more following a recipe, and if the recipe doesn’t work, or say you’re in a situation when you don’t have access to the tools you rely on, then you can’t develop. And if that is the case, then the tools are not so much acting as a crutch, but instead acting as your legs.
Thanks for the thought provoking post
Rob
I do think that there are a lot of tools out there that are poorly made by someone looking for a shortcut to a problem that only they or a small community of coders have. That said, I think that a lot of tools or plugins can be useful if used correctly.
Like Rob said, if you know what you’re doing, a good tool simply shortens the development time. Let’s face it, many projects have a lot of mundane coding (Especially Java or C#) and having a tool that saves you the typing is great.
Not to mention some of the stronger UML tools out there that will stub your code out while you design your program. That’s a great time saver.
The drawback to 99% of these tools though, and what I think you’re getting at, is that they’re not always simple to understand and use. They’ve got quirks that require you to do something above and beyond to get it to work “just right”. So in short, I agree with you for the most part, but there are some gems out there that are easy to use and make development easier. I have the web developers toolbar but don’t use it too often, but Firebug and Chromebug are absolute must haves.
I have to agree with Marc, its like programming in C and not using GDB or in a web developer’s case programming in php doing ajax requests and not have firebug. Programmers are hard rocks to crack when it comes to introducing them with a new tool. For example I have a simple lib to get rid of a LOT of sql code to deal with inserts / updates. 2 programmers of 3 programmers saw no use for it. 1 of the 3 used excel to generate sql, the others just wrote it out. The one that did use my lib asked every question about it, and then loved it. It saves us both time in sql and in php, as far as writing and even better debugging.