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I wonder if we're any more productive - whether we spend more time doing research to find a library routine than it would take to just code it.

This is one problem in the OCaml community. Uptake of the new "standard" libraries is lukewarm because everyone has already half-written their own standard library.

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We are more productive. It is not simply a matter of have/not have the routine. It is also a matter of usability. If you did the routine yourself, you would make it specific. When you needed it again, you would need to either write it again from scratch or modify it. The framework has its methods coded in ways to be the least specific possible so to avoid rewrite (in an ideal world, everything would be like it).

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