On occasion I'm a little disappointed when I see developers create frameworks and toolkits. I understand that it is enjoyable to do so, but we, as application developers, should be majorly focused on the business needs of developing applications.
Quite often we think that xyz widget doesn't do exactly what is "required" and therefore pursue a path of days (weeks) writing frameworks and toolkits.
Let's not do this anymore.
Instead, every time you, as a developer, get the urge to write a framework or toolkit or even just a utility class, think about extending an existing open source project to meet your needs; or even starting a new open source project. For one thing, your requirements will most likely be challenged (which is a good thing). You will no doubt end up with something better than you could have created yourself (yes, that's hard to swallow, I know!). Importantly though, your organisation will benefit; the less "quirks" particular to an organisation the faster it is for them to ramp up resources and "Get Things Done".
Your organisation will also be able to share stuff between the silos. Imagine that.
I often hear, "but my organisation doesn't contribute to open source" (despite heavily using it). In this instance I always ask if the person in question has actually tried selling the business benefit (above) and attempted to make it happen. More often than not, the developer hasn't tried. Organisational behaviour is driven by the views of their employees and contractors. Organisations change and are changing.
I do believe that at the end of the day, it is better to suffer with an xyz widget that does most of what you need it to do than to re-invent the wheel. If you're an application developer then focus on the application, not frameworks and toolkits; unless you're contributing to open source projects.
