Use a tool or write some code

I was in the kitchen, preparing some coffee - fish needs it to swim...

Joined an ongoing discussion some performance related topic as a listener. The boss and two senior developers were talking.

DevA: We should examine what happens if we put a certain load to that component.

Boss: Great, can you separate it from the system, start it and feed it with certain amount of objects? How does it communicate with the rest of the system? I suppose via a JMS. So you can put objects into a queue with a certain frequency to simulate the load.

DevB: We have a demo component, what can be used as a feeder. And we should create a dummy implementation of a component to relay those objects.

Boss: Jmeter is the tool to accomplish those kind of tasks. It speaks JMS, and knows so many other things...

DevA, DevB: [fried fish]

DevA: I don't know Jmeter, it is not necessary, since we can write code ourselves...

DevB: I don't know Jmeter either...

Boss: You should check it. It has a comprehensive documentation. And it is open source, and easy to extend.

DevA: I don't know how can generate testdata with it. We can write own code...

Boss: To accomplish this testing you must use Jmeter, because it is not only feeds the app, but can monitor several things... And it is a tool specialized to performance testing. Please use it...

At this point, the senior developers stared the boss - they might think that: "This is an idiot, use an unknown tool, when we could write code?"

In my opinion, software development is not only coding - but using the tools and practices provided by others. The approach "I write everything from scratch" is out-of-fashion since 80's...