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Why reinvent the wheel

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2006-05-06 04:57:48 - Graham Ellis

1. Because you feel you can do better.

2. Because you've nothing else to do and you want to be busy when your boss walks by.

3. Because it's so much more fun re-inventing the wheel than using someone else's.

4. Because you can learn from your experience.

5. Because you didn't realise that someone else already HAD invented it ... but ...

In Perl programming, we encourage you to use the CPAN. In Python, the Cheeseshop and [Vaults of Parnassus (ex http://www.vex.net/parnassus) - ed -see below] will save you hours of work recoding and maintaining. In PHP, there are great time-saving resources at PECL and PEAR.

Update - October 2012: My attention has been drawn to this old blog article ... resource sites more on, and the Vaults of Parnassus are no more; however, there is a new Python resource in the Python Package Index.