The Great Shortcut in Software Development

In the fast-paced world of software development, why reinvent the wheel when you can just copy-paste someone else’s? We live in a copy-paste culture, where solving problems often means borrowing what already works.

And that’s exactly what npm packages and tech conference talks have in common. Both are shortcuts. Both exist so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Let’s explore how these two seemingly different worlds share the same philosophy of borrowed brilliance.

Software development is sometimes such a copy-paste world, that we don't even think about it. But say you need to implement a feature: Instead of writing every single line of code, you type a few magic words into your terminal and suddenly, the work is 90% done. That's the beauty of npm packages, or any other package ecosystem for that matter! It's like plugging into someone else’s hard-earned experience, letting you skip the grunt work and get straight to the good part, straight to production.

Sure, some packages might feel a bit duct-taped together, with a few quirks that remind you it’s not your original creation. But that’s the trade-off—why spend hours on a custom solution when a pre-built package will get you 90% of the way there?

The Tech Conference Ecosystem

If npm is the shortcut for code, tech conferences are the shortcut for your brain. Just like how npm speeds up coding by using someone else’s work, conferences are like a mental npm install—years of experience, downloaded into your brain in under 45 minutes. Attending a talk is like downloading someone else’s experience straight into your brain. You walk into a session with gaping holes in your expertise and leave, miraculously, with a new set of ideas—and hopefully fewer holes. It’s as easy as installing packages for your mind! (Although, let's be honest: your brain might crash after 8 hours of talks.)

There’s something magical about the efficiency of it all. One session of listening to a seasoned professional saves you weeks of trial, error, and entering a maze of rabbit holes on a particular topic.

Abundance

Not everything in the world of packages or conferences is smooth sailing, mind you. Both come with their version of dependency hell. In software, we’ve all been there: install one package, and suddenly your node_modules folder has grown to the size of a small galaxy, with packages depending on packages, depending on yet more packages, slowly eating away at your disk space.

Similarly, attending too many talks at a conference can lead to mental overload. By the end of the day, your brain feels like it’s got wrapped up in circular dependencies, and you're not sure where to start unwrapping.

Shoulders of Giants

There are plenty of benefits of leveraging the time and effort spent by others. Whether you’re installing a package or soaking up knowledge at a conference, the beauty lies in not having to do it all yourself.

Let others take care of the tedious parts—whether it’s writing a utility function or figuring out the latest industry trend—so you can focus on being creative and getting things done faster.

We’re standing on the shoulders of giants, whether those giants are package maintainers or tech conference speakers. They've done the hard work so we can take the shortcut, and isn’t that what being smart is all about? Use what’s out there, build faster, it's the way we work, after all!