The article is now two decades old. He was bucking the prevailing wisdom a bit. We had gone from cowboy coder teams building everything themselves, to highly s

The article is now two decades old. He was bucking the prevailing wisdom a bit. We had gone from cowboy coder teams building everything themselves, to highly structured/abstract code bases. "Don't build if you can buy, don't roll your own if there's an existing tool, if you do build a tool, make sure you make it in a way that's reusable." Etc. Here, Joel was saying that there are exceptions to the rule. That better teams should consider these exceptions before just leaning on the conventional wisdom. I think in the decades since this article was first written, his way of thinking has become more common.