People talk about "reinventing the wheel" as if it's some sort of curse. It's true: in this day and age, tons of libraries are already available for your picking. These libraries have a lot of people working on it, so you can be assured that all the bases have already been covered (as much as possible).

Why recreate something that's already been created? And more: why recreate something that has a very likely to be a worse version of what's already there?

If we were talking about utility, then the recreation has no point. But from the point of view of the craftsman, it means the world.

Caring for our Craft

Engineering has always been associated with logic. We work daily with equations, syntax, optimizations, and all of those nuts and bolts to make sure that our products are working as smoothly and as fast as they can. We decide -- through logic -- everything: from architecture all the way to the last semicolon.

But at the end of the day, it's our innovation, creativity, and ingenuity that drives all of these decisions. We won't have a project without an idea.

The paradoxical truth is that engineering is art more often than it is engineering.

And for any craft that works with art, care is a must.

A baker has to hand-pick ingredients, knead the dough properly, measure accurately, and understand the nuance of every decision in order to create the perfect batch of bread. Truly, bread created this way will be said to have been made with care.

On the other hand, if the baker uses stale ingredients, kneads the dough hastily, measure inaccurately, and just perform random decisions (possibly due to inexperience), the result would be stale and lifeless bread.

Only by creating, making mistakes, destroying, and once again recreating, will a baker be able to create bread with heart. That is, bread that's been cared for.

Reinvent the Wheel

Just like the baker in our story, us engineers would get by just fine by using bottled up solutions without truly understanding the nuances behind them. Our customers would most likely be none the wiser.

No. Reinventing the wheel is not for them.

Reinventing the wheel is for us. It's for the author of the code. It's for the readers of the code. It's for other engineers who want to master the craft, and learn how to be master craftsmen in the field.

Reinventing the wheel allows us to learn from what other engineers have experienced, and then make their experiences our own. It allows us to understand every decision, why a function was broken down, and why a variable was named as it was.

Reinventing the wheel is the most efficient way for engineers to assimilate knowledge from those who've already walked our paths.

We do this not for any clout, or to please anyone else. We do this for the love of the craft.

So reinvent the wheel, and display it as a trophy. Be proud of the art you've created.