> what is the point of reinventing the wheel? For many of us (me included), it's not REinventing the wheel, it's inventing it. I've taken a quick look through

> what is the point of reinventing the wheel? For many of us (me included), it's not REinventing the wheel, it's inventing it. I've taken a quick look through here, and some of these are in the 'yeah, I can do that straight off' category, some are in the 'I -think- I could do that' and some are in the '...right.... I'm not sure how I'd approach that' category. Remember that not everyone is in the same boat as you, and at the same level. I'm sure I'm way behind 99% of the people on HN, so maybe this is the wrong audience. In addition, there's also the element of the development of the wheel - after all, they used to be wooden, and then gained a steel tyre, a proper bearing, etc... The code you create today may well be completely different (and hopefully better in every respect) than the code from yesteryear. >Even if you are looking to hone your skills in a new language, creating something genuinely new seems like it would be more useful and motivational. Maybe, but sometimes having the limitation of producing a specific thing can be useful - certainly when teaching music in the past, there has been room for both approaches, and I think that carries across into coding. There are also plenty of people who don't know -what- to create, and anything they look at is such a massive, difficult project combining multiple skills they may not have 100% down that it's probably better to do some simple 'test pieces' like I had to do when I was an engineering apprentice.