Re^4: Reinvent the wheel!

I'm not saying everyone is a Picasso, or an Einstein. I'm not saying there isn't a lot of crappy re-invented wheels either. There's also a lot of crappy art and debunked physics theories too. But we don't get anywhere by telling Picasso at an early age to stop messing with paints and go milk the goats because 'everything to know about art has already been learned by others'.

I rather suspect that people who've written and maintained argument parsers -- especially if they've dealt with feature requests and bug reports -- have a much better idea what argument parsers need to do than someone who's never written an argument parser before.

And how exactly did these 'people' get that knowledge? Divine inspiration? What, where they born with argument parser code in their heads?

Neither you nor I have the power to predict who will become giants and who will merely blot the playground with weeds. But surely there will be no giants at all if all we do is stamp out seeds where we find them.

Comment on Re^4: Reinvent the wheel!

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Re^5: Reinvent the wheel! by chromatic (Archbishop) on Mar 21, 2009 at 22:01 UTC
But we don't get anywhere by telling Picasso at an early age to stop messing with paints and go milk the goats because 'everything to know about art has already been learned by others'. But surely there will be no giants at all if all we do is stamp out seeds where we find them. That's a strawman argument, with very little connection to what I wrote. Surely my argument deserves more consideration than such callous dismissal! And how exactly did these 'people' get that knowledge? As I wrote in my original reply, by reading code, by examining prior art, by iteration and refinement, by reviewing the desires and needs of users.	[reply]
Re^6: Reinvent the wheel! by ruzam (Curate) on Mar 22, 2009 at 01:51 UTC
As I wrote in my original reply, by reading code, by examining prior art, by iteration and refinement, by reviewing the desires and needs of users Oh please, and I'm tossing out a strawman argument? What prior Art? Prior art comes from someone who dared to 're-invent' the wheel in the first place. Iteration and refinement? Isn't that exactly what re-invention is about? Reviewing the desires and needs of users? There are no users, just an itch that needs scratching. You're describing the 'post' re-invention phase when highly skilled yet un-imaginative people jump on the wagon and start squeezing the new wheel for their own use. We may as well be drones stuck in a back room reverse engineering the latest gadgets. That's not creativity, that's mindless automation.	[reply]