People talk about "reinventing the wheel" as if it's some sort of curse. It's true: in this day and age, tons of libraries are already available fo...
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I think you raise quite a good point here Adrian, it's drilled into us not to reinvent the wheel, and then beginners are stuck with no projects to take on to show their skills.
Reinvent. Do it your own way, and as Adrian says - display it as a trophy.
If you decide you want to develop your own Linter just for fun, or build a web app that already exists just for the challenge - do it and be proud of your accomplishments!
Glad we're on the same page, Val!
Absolutely! And as an ex-Head Baker, that analogy was very relevant haha!
Existing implementations get outdated. Especially on the web.
Many libraries aim for completeness: too many features, may still lack a feature you need, and not enough minimalism. There is no point to add in features you don't use, and code splitting does not always remove all of the parts you don't use.
I think it is almost always better to write a custom solution fit perfectly for the need and keep your dependencies at a minimum, too. You'll get tons of deps even when you try to avoid them, because there is always stuff that is pointless to make yourself. And you can find minimalistic utilities that do exactly what you need, and do some hard stuff that makes no sense to spend your own time (if you're limited in time as we easily are).
Keeping code focused makes it easier to change it later and you have less to throw away.
I think this is one of the best routes to take for smaller teams. It gets more difficult when you work at scale. Working with proprietary tech increases onboarding time since it's harder to just find engineers who "know how to do the job".
Great points, I totally agree with you!
I also feel that reinventing the wheel makes you appreciate the technology that's out there already. For example, I'm rebuilding my blog and I realized there's a lot that goes into a CMS. I definitely take things like this for granted when it's a one click deploy for a headless CMS.
Good point, Jonathan! I know of bicyclists who tear down their own bikes just to recreate it (exactly the same way) again. It's not just a matter of "what works". Appreciating the craftsmanship that's put into a piece of work is (I would argue) more important!
This is such a cool post. Great advice!
Glad you liked it, Michael!
Ever decided to use someone else's wheel, then spend hours trying to figure out how to put the wheel in?
Sometimes it's just necessary to reinvent the wheel and make it a better wheel.
Exactly. Sometimes the shoe just doesn't fit.
Great post! What do you think is a good Wheel to reinvent ? 😂😂
I work with AI, and one of the most fun I've had is implementing linear regression from scratch!