cam

writes a list of things he learned in 2001 which contains a really simple lesson:

“No matter how good your idea may sound, chances are someone else has already thought of it. Accept this as a kind of self-compliment.”

for whatever reason, i had this lesson burned-in at birth and it always amazes me how many people will assume that a perfectly good idea is a bad idea if someone else has thought of it. strange really – the world is a big place and it’s just a conceit to believe that your idea is a new idea. a conceit which is much less difficult to propagate now that
google

is around.

this lesson is really a rule, with a
corollary

relevant to programmers:

“It’s been said by other people, but it’s worth repeating: the best programmers these days know how to use the Web to solve problems.

I’m not talking about just knowing how to find things on MSDN online or Apple’s developer site . As often as not, the problem I need to solve hasn’t been addressed there—but somebody, somewhere has run across the same thing and found a solution.”

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