Nah, I think it applies just fine. There is a strong culture of building on top of the work of others, and in some cases people build really neat stuff that th

Nah, I think it applies just fine. There is a strong culture of building on top of the work of others, and in some cases people build really neat stuff that they could never have done on their own by pulling in years of work in the form of libraries and datasets and etc, but that way of working isn't for everybody. You might end up spending more time trying to keep up with the latest and greatest everything instead of developing your own ideas. I think of Minecraft as a pretty good example. While everyone else was focused on making photorealistic shooters on game engine X Notch was all like "what if everything was cubes that went on forever", and he ended up making something super unique (and extremely popular). Or Chuck Moore with all his wacky Forths. Not the billionaire that Notch is, but he seems pretty happy.