<p>Regardless of setting, here are the typical steps my colleagues and I take when starting a new project:</p>
<ol>
<li><b>Forage:</b> Find existing snippets of code to build my project upon. This might include code I wrote in the past or that colleagues sent to me in various stages of bit-rot. If I am lucky, I can find a software library that does some of what I want; if I am really lucky, then it will come with helpful documentation. Almost nobody starts coding a real-world project "from scratch" anymore; modern programmers usually scavenge parts from existing projects.</li>
<li><b>Tinker:</b> Play with these pieces of existing code to assess their capabilities and limitations. This process involves compiling and running the code on various inputs, inserting "print" statements to get a feel for when certain lines execute and with what values, and then tweaking the code to see how its behavior changes and when it breaks. (Now loop between steps 1 and 2 until I am satisfied with my choice of building blocks for my project. Then move on to step 3.)</li>
<li><b>Weld:</b> Try to attach ("weld") pieces of existing code to one another. I might spend a lot of time getting the pieces compiled and linked together due to missing or conflicting dependencies. Impedance mismatches are inevitable: Chances are, the code pieces I have just welded together were never designed to "play nicely" with one another, or to suit the particular needs of my project.</li>
<li><b>Grow:</b> Hack up some hard-coded examples of my new code interfacing with existing "welded" code. At this point, my newborn code is sloppy and not at all abstracted, but that is okay—I just want to get things working as quickly as possible. In the process, I debug lots of idiosyncratic interactions at the seams between my code and external code. Wrestling with corner cases becomes part of my daily routine.</li>
<li><b>Doubt:</b> When implementing a new feature, I often ask myself, "Do I need to code this part up all by myself, or is there some idiomatic way to accomplish my goal using the existing code base or libraries?" I do not want to reinvent the wheel, but it can be hard to figure out whether existing code can be molded to do what I want. If I am lucky, I can ask the external code's authors for help; but I try not to get my hopes up because they prob-<!-- END_PAGE_1 -->ably did not design their code with my specific use case in mind. The gulf of execution is often vast: conceptually simple features take longer than expected to implement.</li>
<li><b>Refactor:</b> Notice patterns and redundancies in my code and then create abstractions to generalize, clean up, and modularize it. As I gradually refactor, the interfaces between my code and external code start to feel cleaner, and I also develop better intuitions for where to next abstract. Eventually I end up "sanding down" most of the rough edges between the code snippets that I started with in step 4.</li>
</ol>
<p>(Now, repeat steps 4 through 6 until my project is completed.)</p>
