

When Your Customer is Your Competitor: The Return of Roll Your Own - andrewvc
http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2010/01/12/roll-your-own/

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grumpycanuck
I know it seems obvious, but determining when to create your own tech instead
of using or extending existing solutions is tough. Even tougher given the
tendency of people to think their situations are unique instead of being "just
like situation X with Y added."

I mean, how many times (to beat a dead horse) have you seen someone say "I
wrote my own framework because <insert contrived scenario that other
frameworks have solved or are easily extended to solve>".

Yes, sometimes your situation is so unique you need to role your own solution.
Chances are it's your ego talking instead of common sense.

~~~
andrewvc
True, but then there are situations like Rails, where 37 Signals could have
built their apps using existing tech, but said 'there should be a better way'.
I mean, if you told someone "I'm building this project management app, and I'm
going to take an esoteric language no one knows, and write an app framework
from scratch" they'd rightly tell you you're crazy.

Most endeavours that start like that end up as failures, however without these
attempts tech would stagnate.

~~~
fnid
If one _were_ to set out on such a path and accomplish the goal out of hobby
or desire to learn a new language, or for whatever reason, how long would
something like that take? How long did it take 37s to build ROR? How long did
PHP take?

I'm just curious...

