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Comment by leakycap | Hacker News Reader

I get wanting to do hard things, but do you write in binary? Do you crank your own electricity?

My most valuable resource is time. Sure, I could learn more low-level aspects of my craft ... and sometimes I find it useful to do so.

When I focus on doing the hardest, already solved things by re-implementing them my own way, what value am I adding?

I've never met a client who cared about a library or how I did something in code - until it broke. Then, they didn't care who wrote it, they just cared it started working again.

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Writing in binary or cranking your own electricity is easy. Anyone can do it.

There is a difference between things that are difficult and things that just take a lot of work.

People have built tables but I still build tables myself. Not as many people will use them as people who use IKEA tables, but that’s okay, I’m still going to build them.

I don't think tables are the hard thing.

If you wanted to grow your wood, plane and dry it yourself, etc... then you'd be "hard way" building a table.

I assume you use tools?

I mean, a table is as hard as you make it. I work with rough construction lumber, and make nice finished goods, my point was that people still do stuff that isn’t worth their time financially.

> I mean, a table is as hard as you make it.

We aren't talking about the same thing: I stated "I don't think tables are the hard thing."

Note the word "the" in front of "hard thing" -- I'm referencing the article we're discussing, which mentions "the hard thing"

The entire process is "the thing". In the case of a table by adjusting the inputs to the process you can cover quite a wide range of difficulty and required time.

For example, start from a felled tree, use only hand tools, and assemble using medieval joinery techniques. Building a table that way is quite hard by modern standards.

Now if you'll excuse me I need to get back to writing this date parsing library in assembly.

Not even doing it from scratch is the hard thing, the hard thing is getting the experience to know how to fit stuff together the best way to achieve your design and utilitarian goals, what wood to use, etc.

The hard thing isn’t building the date parsing library in assembly, it’s learning assembly well enough to do it in the first place.

I’m not sure where this discussion began but I was rebelling against everyone who says “just buy it” in regards to anything hard to do.

> I've never met a client

There is difference between “never build your own for a professional need” and “never build your own”.

I build my own stuff if it is for my own purposes, and I use proper tools and libraries for my professional work.

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