Knowing What Not to Build

Development is about building solutions to solve problems. But when developing solutions, do you need to build everything yourself? In this episode we talk with Jonathan Solórzano-Hamilton (@jhsolor, @peachpie), Assistant Director of IT Operations and Architecture for ORIS at UCLA. We discuss why as a developer it is part of your job to know when not to build something yourself. During our conversation we outline when to use existing software and the benefits of doing so. We also outline guidelines to follow when looking for pre-existing solutions. Jonathan also provides a recap of his personal experience of what can happen when a development team tries to build everything in house.

Key Takeaways

• Building everything yourself comes with risks and technical debt for you and your team.


• Focus your efforts on building whats important for your project, for everything else try and use expsing packages.


• It's part of your job to inform/sell your clients/company how to best build solutions.

When looking for existing software

• Search for packages on reputable sources


• Look at community usage, is the package being used?


• check package activity, is it still supported?


• Review the license is it compatible with your project?

Links from this Episode

• We fired our top talent. Best decision we ever made


• The Making of Tesla


• Completing the Netflix Cloud Migration

Pervious Episodes Mentioned

• Using D.U.M.B goals and S.M.A.R.T goals to grow your development career.


• Taking Risks

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