chromatic,
If I had to come up with a number, I would wager that 75% of the code I write is "throw away" code. I do not work as a professional programmer and think of code as my creative outlet. It is easy to see from a few links that my primary pursuit is knowledge. As an artist, it is often important to me not to be influenced by existing solutions when solving a problem.

Here is where I make a clear distinction and was happy that you wrote this node. I very seldom have the hubris to believe I have created something superior. I go back and examine very closely existing wheels. I run my code through their test suites. I discover what bad assumptions I made and how others addressed them. I spend way more time on a problem than is required to solve it so I might squeeze the very essence out of it and learn as much as it has to offer.

This isn't the only way that I "waste" my time learning. I spend a lot of time answering questions here and on #perl IRC. I see the common elements of problems over and over again. I see how others responding solve the problem. I learn from what they have to offer and often will summarize the differences in the solutions and why one may be more advantageous over the others. It has been my experience that well worn wheels are able to accomplish the job for 98% of the general problems - there is still 2% that require going beyond existing wheels.

I spend this 75% of the time doing "pure" research so that I can do my best the 25% of writing "applied" solutions. I do make money from programming (hobby vocation) and I do solve real world problems (for myself, for my employer and for complete strangers). This includes very large complex applications and not just 50 line scripts.

After nearly 7 years of programming in perl, I think I would still be a novice if I only wrote code when I needed to.

Note: All the numbers in this node are made up WAGs

Cheers - L~R

In reply to Re^3: Reinvent the wheel! by Limbic~Region
in thread Reinvent the wheel! by telemachus

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.