Why search is a developer's most powerful tool

By Ken Krugler and John D. Mitchell

February 1, 2007 12:00 PM ET

Comments

(3)

LinuxWorld - Wait! Keep reading! This is not yet another methodology that promises to solve all of your programming problems. What we'll be discussing in this article is why search has become a critical tool for developers.

Search-driven development (SDD) is an easy label that we can put on a simple fact of life in modern software development: searching for technical information is a large, costly part of creating and using information technologies.

Let's take a real-world example. Hari Jayaram is a postdoctoral researcher in biochemistry. Like all developers, he uses code written by others -- in his case, the seqhound bioinformatics API from Unleashed Informatics. And, like all developers, his code didn't "just work" the first time he ran it.

So now what? A typical developer will do things like this:

Look for additional documentation on the API.
Read newsgroups for people having the same problem.
Search the company's site for help with the API.
Search for code examples where other people successfully used the API. This is what Jayaram did.

What all of the above approaches have in common is that they involve search as a way to find the information needed to solve the problem at hand.

OK, you say, search helped make Jayaram happy, but that's not how I program. Heck, I don't even use open-source code, and I can GREP my own code, so what more do I need?

Good question, and one that we'll answer five different ways.

Reason No.1: We're already searching every day.

As we mentioned above, searching for technical information is a large, costly part of creating and using information technologies, and we are already paying for it whether we like it or not.

How "large and costly" is all this technical searching? Well, recent independent research says that developers spend about 25% of their time just searching for information. No wonder people worry about a "software crisis"! Between too many meetings, bad requirements, and hunting for useful information, we're stuck working long hours and still feeling like we haven't accomplished what we need to (let alone all that we really want to).

Some folks, often managers, are skeptical that developers really spend 25% of the time looking for technical information. If we break it down even a little bit, the number often seems quite low.

For example, how much of our time doing debugging is actually looking for answers in FAQs and traditional documentation, or searching blogs for people who have already run into the same problem and figured out work-arounds, or looking through mailing lists and

Comment Recommend Digg Twitter ShareThis

Email Print Send Feedback Reprints

Reprinted with permission from

For more Linux news and tutorials, visit LinuxWorld.com.
Copyright 2006 IDG.net, an IDG company. All rights reserved.

Jump to comments

software development

Additional Resources

WHITE PAPER

EFD vs. HDD - What You Need to Know

Enterprise flash drives provide a new Tier 0 storage layer capable of delivering high I/O performance at a very low latency. Proper use of EFDs in an Oracle environment can deliver increased performance compared to fibre channel drives. Read the recommendations for identification of the best DB components for EFDs.

WHITE PAPER

Gartner Research Report: Magic Quadrant for Application Delivery Controllers, 2009

The market for products to improve the delivery of application software over networks remains dynamic and innovative. Vendors focused on solving enterprises' most-pressing application problems have become the top players.

WHITE PAPER

Eight Criteria for Server Load Balancing

Server load balancers are a simple yet highly effective means to scale an application environment while ensuring its availability. Today's solutions should also address application performance and security. Read about the top eight criteria you should consider when choosing a server load balancer and how Citrix NetScaler meets those requirements.

What People Are Saying

3 comments | Add new

See all comments (3) | Add new

White Papers & Webcasts

IDC Research Report: The Business Value of Consolidating on Energy-Efficient Servers
Download this Resource Now!

Data Protection is not an Insurance Policy - You Cannot Buy-back Lost Data.
Download Now

The Business Case for Virtualization
Download this Resource Now!

Low Administration ROI Tool
Download Now

Clipper Group Report: HP Provides Enhanced Options for Data Center
Download this Resource Now!

Effectively Implementing Datacenter Automation
Effectively select and deploy the best datacenter automation solution today!

Best Practices for Optimizing Performance and Availability in Virtual Infrastructures
Read More

XenApp Extends Virtualized Application Delivery
Download this webcast to learn how to accelerate delivery of virtualized applications and streamline management.

The Top 5 Server Monitoring Battles - and How You Can Win Them
Read More

Top HPC Use Cases in Life Sciences
Learn from the experts how best to apply cutting edge high-performance computing techniques a life sciences environment.

All White Papers | All Webcasts