Not invented here syndrome

Not invented here (NIH) syndrome has become much more understood over the past decade or so. There was a time when there were a handful of developers in the world developing software. Most knew development teams needed to figure out how to write basic data structures such as linked lists, and basic sorting algorithms such as quick sort, or how to perform spell checking. This knowledge wasn't generally available and componentization of software had yet to occur. The value of their project was overshadowed by the sheer complexity of the infrastructure around producing effective software.

Shoot ahead in time slightly into an era of componentized software. Components, libraries, APIs, and frameworks began to appear, that took the infrastructure-like aspects of a software project, and made sharable components that anyone within reason could simply drop into their project and start using. Presumably, the time required to understand and learn the API would be less than having to write that component from scratch.

To a select few people this isn't the case. Their ability to write software is at such a high level that for them to understand and accept an API was a larger friction (they thought) than it was to write their own. Thus, the NIH syndrome began. Because a certain technology, library, API, or framework wasn't invented by a member of the developer team, and therefore under their entire control, it needed to be written from scratch.

In the early days, this wasn't so bad. Writing a linked list implementation was indeed quicker than trying to download, install, and understand someone else's linked list implementation (for most people). These libraries grew to millions of lines of code, and hundreds of person-hours worth of work, but NIH continued. Language frameworks and runtimes became more popular. C++'s STL, Java, .NET, and so on, included standard algorithms (framework) and abstractions to interface with underlying operating systems (runtimes), so it has become harder to ignore these libraries and write everything from scratch. But the sheer magnitude of the detail and complexity of these libraries was difficult to grasp given the detail of the documentation. In order to better utilize these libraries and frameworks, information on how to use them began to be shared. Things like best practices made it easier for teams to accept third-party libraries and frameworks. Lessons learned were being communicated within the community as best practices. "I spent 3 days reading documentation and tweaking code to perform operation Y, here's how I did it" became common.

Practices are a form of componentization. We don't actually get the component, but we get instructions on where, why, and how to make our own component. It can help us keep our software structured and componentized.