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Maybe there should be another programmer maxim: DRO (dont repeat others)

Just what I thought!

One thing to point out: there's a fine line between what is and what is not repetition. You may/will find a tool that's perfect for what you want to do sans one or two features. Your ability to adapt that tool to exactly what you want so you don't have to repeat the 99% of things which are already finished is important.

You must repeat the doing but not the inventing. I propose the following maxim:

Good programmers invent, great programmers copy.

A wise man that I once worked for said "The best code is the code you can steal."

Agreed, but now I think of it there is a level beyond the copying/stealing of code: "The best code is the code you didn't write".

Of course, it is even better to beat a complex program with a small amount of shell-fu.[1]

[1]: http://franklinchen.com/blog/2011/12/08/revisiting-knuth-and...

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