For the 3 years prior to starting work at ireckon I worked In a company developing in house web sites on my own.  I was the programmer, software designer, tech support guy, system admin, SEO 'expert', tester and copy writer. I even did some graphic design work at times (although, there is no way anyone with 20/20 vision would have classed anything I did as design).

Working by myself did teach me two very important things:  The value of practice and research.

Any programmer, regardless of their experience, will not be able to know (or remember) everything there is to know about programming.  How can they?  There are new software versions, technologies, features, widgets, gadgets, code libraries, tools etc being released every day. It would be physically impossible for somebody to find and keep up with them all. Taking the time to research good current sources for information can be invaluable.  If you have a problem that arises, you will have a good idea on where to find an answer even though you may not have a clue what the solution could be.  Trust me; it will save you hours of trawling the net and tearing your hair out.

Another thing that that has caused me a lot of grief and manual hair loss is fixing up other people’s code, which brings me to my next point, the value of practice. I have been through a lot of other people’s code over the last few years, and some of it has been absolutely awful; incredibly hard to read and in a few cases simply didn't work. These programmers did a particularly lacklustre job because they, regardless of their years of experience in the IT industry, didn't take the time to learn and practice the basics of programming.  Simple things they should have learned like coding conventions, variable types and basic model / view programming principles simply aren't there. Extending a poorly built website is like extending a house with weak foundations:  it always takes additional time and money to fix the original problem before the extension can even begin.

Even though I learned these 2 things working on my own, beginning work at ireckon has made me realise I was lacking something very important:  the great advantages of working within a team of professionals.