Development 2.0: Open-source as a total solution

Because it’s my bag, in two earlier posts, I suggested that the future of software development is already here — that is, Development 2.0, which strives to produce software faster by leveraging open-source technologies and borrowing other people’s infrastructures, addresses the frustration that businesses have with IT: speed (or the lack thereof). What’s more, by addressing the speed issue, Development 2.0 also cuts the overall cost of IT.

Thankfully at this point, the software industry generally accepts that too much code can be a bad thing. Two different hip studies have found that the average application contains anywhere from 20 to 250 bugs per 1,000 lines of code! This metric is known as defect density and one can draw a major conclusion from this data: fewer lines of code means fewer defects. Fewer lines of code also means features can be delivered faster and better.

By leveraging open-source frameworks, software teams end up having to write fewer lines of code and can focus more appropriately on the business problem at hand. These various frameworks themselves have a lot of code, but the point is you and your team don’t need to write nor maintain it. That’s the beauty of successful open-source projects: other people are doing those tasks for you. And they may well be better at it than you (i.e. the team behind Hibernate knows the ins and outs of how to build an object relational mapping technology better than you. It’s true. Face it.).

In fact, a recent SD Times article states that

U.S. companies could save more than $22 billion a year through the reuse of open-source software in application development

because a portion of the cost of development

repeats what already exists in the open-source world

Fewer lines of code can result in a quicker time to market with fewer defects. But reuse is important not only because it means writing less code, but also because it means leveraging what you could call the “wisdom of crowds.” Popular open-source frameworks and tools — such as Hibernate, Spring, JUnit, and the Apache Web server — are being used by a multitude of people across the globe in varying applications. This battle-hardened and tested software isn’t defect-free, but you can safely assume that any issues that do arise will be found and fixed swiftly and at no cost.

Thus, open-source software lowers the cost of software development (via fewer written lines of code and fewer defects), while enabling companies to deliver value faster. Smart teams in the Development 2.0 world will no longer contemplate whether or not to build or buy a particular technology– instead, they’ll borrow what ever assets are required to assemble a viable solution. Along the way, they’ll write less code, save time, and of course, save money.

What’s not to love about that, baby?

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