It feels like whittling. Even though “construction” is the most frequently used metaphor for trying to describe what we do all day at work, it doesn’t feel right. I also don’t know why we only use wood-working metaphors. Any psychiatrists in the house?
It feels like whittling to me because of something called “composability.” Composability is all about combining pieces of code to create something bigger, that does more work. There are several ways to do this, and times there are very real technical challenges. But this is a lot harder than it sounds.
When we think of construction the first attribute we think of is its composability. Any weekend warrior can go to Home Depot and get what they need, and so long as they’re paying attention, asking the right questions, and checking the specs—all the pieces will work together very nicely. As a software engineer that would be amazing. I dare to say we experience the opposite.
Very few things “Just Work”. Many commentators have lamented that a lot of programming tasks “these days” are just writing “glue” code to put various things together. I don’t disagree, but I also don’t think that is a Bad Thing™️, and its not easy to do well either. Because composability is hard.
In fact, its so hard there are many times we have to pass on re-using working services and code because retro-fitting it to our new purposes would actually take longer than just doing it over, precisely the way we need it. Composability can be harder than making something brand new.
This is why I chose whittling as my metaphor. Sometimes you get to simply take something you’ve already done and re-use it, whole-cloth. But, more often than not, you have to start from a blank slate, and mold the code/chisel the piece of wood until it works/looks just the way you need it to for what you’re doing.