Joel Spolsky: For the umpteenth time, I found myself dependent on a code library which had a crashing bug that was unacceptable in code I shipped. What are you supposed to do if you're the chef at Les Halles and your fishmonger is giving you smelly fish?
Today, you need to know how to work with libraries of thousands of functions, representing buggy code written by other people. You can't possibly learn them all, and the documentation is never good enough to write solid code, so you learn to use online resources like Google, DejaNews, MSDN. (I became much more productive after a coworker at Google showed me that you're better off using Google to search Microsoft's knowledge base rather than the pathetic search engine Microsoft supplies). In this new world, you're better off using common languages like Visual Basic and common libraries like WinInet, because so many other people are using them it's easier to find bug fixes and sample code on the Web. Last week, Michael added a feature to CityDesk to check the installed version of Internet Explorer. It's not hard code to write, but why bother? It only took him a few seconds to find the code, in VB, on the Web and cut and paste it.
(Tip: to search the Microsoft knowledge base using Google, add site:support.microsoft.com to your query.) [Joel on Software]