Mathieu Tozer's Dev Blog

Apple has done a nice job of factoring out a lot of the hard stuff,
so that developers can spend more of their valuable time
concentrating more on what is unique to their applications. This
amounts to not re-inventing the wheel.
I have realised this while writing assignment 3 for CSE1402. At first
before I had discovered that it was OK to use OS X as the 'Target
Operating System', I went into all this detail describing what a
'drawer' was

... A special kind of window ...

But it turns out that all that was just wasted air. I could have just
said

'See Interface Builder's documentation on what a drawer is'

Since that's what the implementors are going to be using to actually
build the project.

So here's what I've learnt from this.
1. Know what system you are designing for from the start.
2. Know the system's capabilities well, preferably before you start
designing, so that you don't re-invent the wheel, as I said.

I suppose all this 'learn before you start' is easier said than done,
considering you learn a whole lot by doing. But it's something to
keep in mind and be primed to.

Know your tools!