Introduction

What if I said to you: “how would you like to get paid for someone else’s work?” Some of you would respond with heck no I love writing code, but the point is, if someone else’s labors helped you do a better job than that would be a good thing, right?

Let me start by dispelling two myths: Third-party code exists and “Not Invented Here” (NIH) syndrome is a good thing. There is no such thing as third-party code. There is code you wrote and code someone else wrote. If you add up all the code you have written in your entire career it probably wouldn’t come close to just the lines of code in the .NET framework, so most of your code is actually other party code. Other party code is also code that someone spent their time, money, and resources to produce. Thus other party code is actually leveraged code; you benefit and someone else pays. Next, if you or your boss have NIH syndrome then you may be kidding yourself—99% of all code wasn’t invented here or where you are at (unless you work at Microsoft). Most of it was invented at Microsoft and some of it was purchased by Microsoft for your use. This means that almost all of your code—even if you have written a million lines—is other party, leveraged code. That’s a good thing.

Microsoft Word probably has cost a billion dollars over its lifetime to produce. Love it or hate it, it's a good Word Processor for about $100. That’s because the capability exists in one application, but the cost is leveraged across millions of users. Word is a product of leveraged code. Companies that are in the business of providing you with code have economies of scale going for them; all you and I have to do leverage their code.

To demonstrate, I want to you to think about the ASP.NET GridView that ships with Visual Studio. It shows data in rows and columns with a couple of lines of code. It’s cheaper to use than writing your own, but does it let you drag and drop column headers and support integrated filtering? No. If you want those things you need other, “other party” code. A great example is DevExpress’ ASPxGridView.

Microsoft makes money writing a development platform. A GridView control is not a real money maker for Microsoft. DevExpress makes money writing components (and other things like CodeRush and Refactor). This means where Microsoft is motivated to provide a basic grid control, DevExpress is motivated to provide a super grid control. Both are examples of leveraged code, but the latter gives you snappier, more professional results.