Common acronyms

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Sunday, January 20, 2013 21:09:55 Philippe Sigaud wrote:
> - NIH : Not Invented Here. Also: NIH Syndrome. When a community
> starts writing its own tools in its own language, (deliberately)
> ignoring there are more mature tools available elsewhere.

I would point out that NIH syndrome doesn't necessarily have anything to do 
with languages. It's simply that someone prefers to write everything themself 
rather than using an existing solution. However, if applied to the D 
community, because the focus is on the language, that does tend to translate 
to writing something specifically in D rather than using a pre-existing 
solution by linking to it with C or whatnot.

The concept of NIH can be an interesting discussion in and of itself though, 
because there are serious advantages to doing everything yourself, and there 
are serious advantages to using existing code rather than having to write and 
maintain it yourself. There's actually a bit of a division among folks where I 
work on whether it's generally a good idea to use 3rd party solutions or 
whether it's better to use homegrown solutions. And it's not an easy question.

Regardless, NIH is definitely an acronym that's worth knowing.

- Jonathan M Davis