This post from the folks at Intercom makes some really good points about the benefits you can get from leveraging other software solutions. It’s an interesting article, but the source works at a company that offers a SaaS solution to help you help your customers (I’m a fan). You can read some interesting discussion at HN. An interesting quote from the post:
Choosing standard technologies is very similar to this, only in software. You need to constrain yourself to solving problems mostly, but not exclusively, with a small, specific set of standard tools. By doing this over time we become experts in them. Then, we are able to build better and faster solutions from them.
From my experience with small teams, having a standard software stack is a big win. It lets you reuse business logic and skills across your business. (The spread of microservices may mean this matters less in the future, though with a small team and product microservices may be overkill.)
However, I wish Rich had titled it “write less software” because that is really what he is advocating for. When I use AWS or Intercom or Gmail, I’m not really running less software. In fact, I may be running more. Since I don’t have insight into those applications, I really don’t know. But I’m not concerned about writing, reading and maintaining as much software, and that is the true win.
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