The Wisdom Of Crowds (Of Developers)
A crowd of developers has fewer blind spots
“given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow” Linus’s law
I had a tricky design problem I was wrestling with recently. I had come up with several potential solutions. Mostly in software developer there is usually an obvious answer to most problems.
This was a wicked problem. There was no easy or obvious solution. Each potential solution to the problem was complex and had a significant maintenance overhead.
The other nagging concern I had was wondering if there was another solution I hadn’t considered.
What did I do?
I explained the problem to some experienced developers/architects and asked if they had tackled similar problems in the past and how would they solve it.
People who have solved the same, or a similar problem, is extremely useful. Experience reveals the unknown, unexpected lower level details of the problem and solution.
There can be complexity or 2nd level/time delayed consequences of the solution. Most problems are the high level problems, hiding underneath are other problems you will need to resolve but you never knew were there.
