Wheel Reinventor’s Principles (2024)
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Wheel Reinventor’s Principles (2024)
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Re: Wheel Reinventor’s Principles (2024)
#2An often unintended benefit of reinventing wheels is vastly superior performance improvements, most of which are entirely unintentional.
Re: Wheel Reinventor’s Principles (2024)
#3> Embrace the strengths of DYI. Create what you need and little more. Be wary of abstractions made for fabricated use cases.
DYI?
Re: Wheel Reinventor’s Principles (2024)
#4> Embrace the strengths of DYI. Create what you need and little more. Be wary of abstractions made for fabricated use cases. DYI?
Meant to say "DIY" (Do it yourself). Thanks for letting me know, I've updated it now!
Re: Wheel Reinventor’s Principles (2024)
#5But should I tell my boss that I'm reinventing everything?
Re: Wheel Reinventor’s Principles (2024)
#6Should mention NIH syndrome.
Re: Wheel Reinventor’s Principles (2024)
#7I'll add "reduce code size and complexity" to the list of benefits. A python library to calculate a simhash, or track changes on a django model, or auto generate test fixtures, will often be 90% configuration cruft for other usecases, and 10% the code your app actually cares about. Reading the library and extracting and finetuning the core logic makes you responsible for the bugs in the 10%, but no longer affected by bugs in the 90%.
Re: Wheel Reinventor’s Principles (2024)
#8Should mention NIH syndrome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here
Yes, it has to be balanced appropriately. I didn't emphasize this a lot in the blog post, but this is really important in a work setting, compared to when working on personal projects. I still think wheel-reinvention has its place in professional teams, but the related challenges should be taken more serious in that case.
Re: Wheel Reinventor’s Principles (2024)
#9I am a wheel re-inventor. Nice article. The _Specificity_ reason listed is usually the driving factor for me, with the others being downstream effects. In short, the wheels are often built for a different chassis than the one I'm using. Adapting these may be more difficult than making a new wheel.
Re: Wheel Reinventor’s Principles (2024)
#10It's funny how often engineers say "it depends"! Even a basic axom like don't reinvent the wheel doesn't always apply. After all, we have entire industries dedicated to doing exactly that! Goodyear spends a lot of time investing in new wheel technology every year.