“Don’t be a plumber” is horrible advice.
I’m pretty sure that this can’t be a ubiquitous phrase across platforms and doing some searching as revealed that perhaps this is a regionalism that has, for better or worse, infected the .net community. The phrase is “Don’t be a plumber” and it’s meant to say, don’t waste your time building something that someone else may have already built for you.
This is true… to a point. But, if you believe that you can do better than the available tools, or if you have a different idea than what is presented in the world and you have a project in which to dogfood your new “plumbing” then by all means, why in the world wouldn’t you be a plumber? I mean, there were plenty of web stacks out there when DHH created Rails in Ruby does that mean that he should have listened to this sage like “wisdom” and not created Rails? I think not.
A pal and ex-co-worker of mine Nate Kohari, was the epitome of someone who loved to think of alternative ways to crack a nut. He never claimed they were better or worse, just that they were alternatives… alternatives that used paradigms that he enjoyed. Should he “not be a plumber” and use Swing? Wouldn’t we be without the beautiful Ninject without his skill/desire to pave new/old roads. I love that Nate’s a plumber and have always encouraged his intellectual pursuits; after all, I get to benefit from them! :)
I heard this over and over again at Central Ohio Day of .NET. Each time I died a little. If we all wait for someone else to be our plumbers then we’ll inevitably lose out. the plumbers will leave .NET (much as I have…) and you’ll end up with more awesome OSS projects like Lucene.NET… and automated port of the Java version of Lucene. Awesome. Please folks, take wisdom and dogma with a grain of salt and decide for yourself what’s appropriate. And please, please, please, be a plumber from time to time.
