Comment by fizlebit | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fizlebit | Hacker News Reader

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People say don't reinvent the wheel usually in a business context because writing from scratch is usually a lot more work than using existing technologies. Sure reusing technologies is also a lot more work than you would expect because most things suck (to different degrees), but so will your newly minted wheel. Only after a lot of hard lessons will it suck less, if at all.

That said there are also contexts in which the existing system that was built sucks so bad that rewriting it usually a boon, even if the new wheel sucks, it sucks less from the start.

You at a minimum should engage with the existing wheels and their users to find the ways in which they do and don't work.

In your own time I think it is great to tinker, pull apart, assemble your own things. Every Jedi makes her own light saber right?

Especially at work, I find existing solutions often lacking. We tend to overestimate the complexity of reinventing many things, and underestimate the cost of ill-fitting abstractions.

In particular, Google-scale frameworks are usually harmfully over-engineered for smaller companies. Their challenge is solving the Google scale, not the problem at hand. At the same time, their complexity implies that a small-scale solution will likewise require a hundred-programmer team to implement.

But I find that far from the truth. In fact, many problems benefit from a purpose-built, small-scale solution. I've seen this work out many times, and result in much simpler, easier-to-debug code. Google-scale frameworks are a very bad proxy for estimating the complexity of a task.

This. Reinventing the wheel in business context IMOH should be only if:

- you can afford it (money)

- you have enough time or your customer can wait

- provide significant benefit to you or your customers (have nothing better to do)

- you don't have fierce competition in your domain

- you are pretty much retired (or could) and treating it more like art/craft/passion project

I compare it with building some custom made designer house and furniture. Many would want that, only some can afford it, even less will pay for it.

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