
Three libraries, a framework and an API - how ContentTagger got built in 7 hours - danw
http://blog.jaggeree.com/post/85891242/three-libraries-a-framework-and-an-api-how
======
tdavis
I still meet people, both in real life and most recently in #startups, who
don't use any sort of 3rd-party libraries or frameworks; they hand-code
everything. I've been trying to explain for years how completely ridiculous
that is for 95% of use cases, but still people fight me.

This is a great example of taking a bunch of existing tools and data then
stringing them together to create something new. Granted, we don't have "The
next Google" here (whatever that means), but it seems like people who still
roll their own everything rationalize it by saying things like "it makes it
more flexible" or "blah isn't scalable enough" or "I don't really like the
conventions".

These are all pretty stupid reasons. Chances are, you're not going to need
that flexibility anyway; if you can't name a half dozen things X doesn't do
that you need it to, just use it. You probably won't ever have to worry about
scaling, so forget it. And if those conventions save hundreds of hours, who
cares?

We have numerous languages now, Python especially, where there is probably a
library for anything you need to do. There might even be 3rd-party APIs for
all the data you need. Embrace the work that others are doing for you: stop
coding and start stealing!

~~~
bravura
Personally, I think your attitude is laughable. Why should I use 3rd-party
APIs? I don't even have the time to learn them, because I'm too busy debugging
by own private programming language, tool chain, and operating system. I'm
surprised I'm even posting this on the internet that everyone uses, as opposed
to my completely solipsistic one-person internet. It's really heaven, trust
me.

