Code Leader: Using People, Tools, and Processes to Build Successful Software

1.5. Summary

Writing code is fun, and it is what we do, but ultimately it is not what we get paid for. Providing business value to your project's sponsors can often best be achieved by purchasing someone else's code. It can be difficult to balance the savings incurred by not writing code against the risks posed by adopting and relying on code you don't own, however. Focus on writing the parts of your application that provide the most value to your project sponsors, and buy everything else if you can. Building a baseline architecture that incorporates the functionality of all the third-party software is one of the best ways to mitigate the risk of adopting third-party code and helps ensure that you find any potential problems early on.