It sounds like you are primarily thinking of professional, full-time programmers.

Not at all.

perrin had a pithy quote about opportunity costs. I believe that the goal of programming is to solve problems, not to produce code. If you can solve problems without writing code, so much the better. Not everyone agrees.

I do believe that an effective learning technique is doing (which is one reason I believe the testing notebook works in it current format), but I also believe that unguided doing is a poor use of time. It's trivial to write a simple HTTP server, if you ignore most of the HTTP specification -- but as a learning technique, writing it by sniffing socket traffic from a single web browser on a single operating system is a poor way of understanding how HTTP works. There's no substitute for reading the relevant RFCs.

If you're only playing around and throw away the code after you've finished, that's fine -- but ignoring all of the knowledge available about what works, what doesn't, and which ideas seemed good but turned out to have problems means you're shortchanging yourself (and anyone who relies on the code) out of false hubris and false laziness.

Writing good software is difficult, especially if it interacts with other users and other software. There are no shortcuts besides well-honed good habits. I want to encourage people to develop good habits and discourage them from developing bad habits.

In reply to Re^2: Reinvent the wheel! by chromatic
in thread Reinvent the wheel! by telemachus

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