3 ms·

Honestly "don't reinvent the wheel" makes absolutely no sense as a saying. We're not still all using wooden discs as wheels, we have invented much better wheels

by mort96 1y ago

Honestly "don't reinvent the wheel" makes absolutely no sense as a saying. We're not still all using wooden discs as wheels, we have invented much better wheels since the neolithic. Why shouldn't we do the same with software?

aalimov_ 1y ago
I always took this saying as meaning that we don’t re-invent the concept of the wheel. For example the Boring company and Tesla hoping to reinvent the concept of the bus/train.. (iirc your car goes underground on some tracks and you get to bypass traffic and not worry about steering) A metal wheel is still just a wheel. A faster package manager is still just a package manager.
- haiku2077 1y ago
  That's not how I've ever seen it used in practice. People use it to mean "don't build a replacement for anything functional."
haiku2077 1y ago
Right, wheels are reinvented every few years. Compare tires of today to the ones 20 years ago and the technology and capability is very different, even though they look identical to a casual eye. My primary vehicle has off-road capable tires that offer as much grip as a road-only tire would have 20-25 years ago, thanks to technology allowing Michelin to reinvent what a dual-purpose tire can be!
- nightpool 1y ago
  > Compare tires of today to the ones 20 years ago and the technology and capability is very different, even though they look identical to a casual eye Can you share more about this? What has changed between tires of 2005 and 2025?
  - haiku2077 1y ago
    In short: Better materials and better computational models. https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15078050/we-drive-the-worlds-most-busted-out-bmw-m3-feature/ https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15078050/we-drive-the... > In the last decade, the spiciest street-legal tires have nearly surpassed the performance of a decade-old racing tire, and computer modeling is a big part of the reason (written about 8 years ago)
simonw 1y ago
When asked why he had invented JSON when XML already existed, Douglas Crockford said: The good thing about reinventing the wheel is that you can get a round one. https://scripting.wordpress.com/2006/12/20/scripting-news-for-12202006/#comment-26383 https://scripting.wordpress.com/2006/12/20/scripting-news-fo...
- idle_zealot 1y ago
  You can get a round one. Or you can make yet another wonky shaped one to add to the collection, as ended up being the case with JSON.
  - simonw 1y ago
    What makes JSON wonky? Personally the only thing I miss from it is support for binary data - you end up having to base64 binary content which is a little messy.
    - idle_zealot 1y ago
      Quoted keys, strict comma rules, very limited data types, are the main ones. There are a host of others if you view it through the lenses of user-read/write, and a different set of issues if you view it as a machine data interface. Trying to combine the two seems fundamentally misguided.
      - collinmanderson 1y ago
        I consider JSON's very limited data types to be part of what makes it so good.
    - Myrmornis 1y ago
      Lack of comments seems like a big one seeing as it's so widely used for "configuration". It's a big enough downside that VSCode and others have violated it via ad-hoc extensions of the format. The comma rules introduce diff noise on unrelated lines.
  - 1y ago
rocqua 1y ago
I came here to (wrongly) say that wooden disks were never used as wheels, and that ot all started with spokes. Some checking showed that, in fact, the oldest known wheels have a lot of solid disks. E.g: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ljubljana_Marshes_Wheel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ljubljana_Marshes_Wheel Hopefully this can disabuse others of similar mistaken memory.
sashimi-houdini 1y ago
I also like Dan Luu's take (starting with a Joel Spolsky quote) “Find the dependencies — and eliminate them.” When you're working on a really, really good team with great programmers, everybody else's code, frankly, is bug-infested garbage, and nobody else knows how to ship on time. We had a similar attitude, although I'd say that we were a bit more humble. We didn't think that everyone else was producing garbage but, we also didn't assume that we couldn't produce something comparable to what we could buy for a tenth of the cost. From talking to folks at some competitors, there was a pretty big cultural difference between how we operated and how they operated. It simply didn't occur to them that they didn't have to buy into the standard American business logic that you should focus on your core competencies, that you can think through whether or not it makes sense to do something in-house on the merits of the particular thing instead of outsourcing your thinking to a pithy saying.[0] [0] https://danluu.com/nothing-works/ https://danluu.com/nothing-works/

by mort96 1y ago

aalimov_ 1y ago

I always took this saying as meaning that we don’t re-invent the concept of the wheel. For example the Boring company and Tesla hoping to reinvent the concept of the bus/train.. (iirc your car goes underground on some tracks and you get to bypass traffic and not worry about steering) A metal wheel is still just a wheel. A faster package manager is still just a package manager.

haiku2077 1y ago
That's not how I've ever seen it used in practice. People use it to mean "don't build a replacement for anything functional."

haiku2077 1y ago

Right, wheels are reinvented every few years. Compare tires of today to the ones 20 years ago and the technology and capability is very different, even though they look identical to a casual eye. My primary vehicle has off-road capable tires that offer as much grip as a road-only tire would have 20-25 years ago, thanks to technology allowing Michelin to reinvent what a dual-purpose tire can be!

nightpool 1y ago
> Compare tires of today to the ones 20 years ago and the technology and capability is very different, even though they look identical to a casual eye Can you share more about this? What has changed between tires of 2005 and 2025?
- haiku2077 1y ago
  In short: Better materials and better computational models. https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15078050/we-drive-the-worlds-most-busted-out-bmw-m3-feature/ https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15078050/we-drive-the... > In the last decade, the spiciest street-legal tires have nearly surpassed the performance of a decade-old racing tire, and computer modeling is a big part of the reason (written about 8 years ago)

simonw 1y ago

When asked why he had invented JSON when XML already existed, Douglas Crockford said: The good thing about reinventing the wheel is that you can get a round one. https://scripting.wordpress.com/2006/12/20/scripting-news-for-12202006/#comment-26383 https://scripting.wordpress.com/2006/12/20/scripting-news-fo...

idle_zealot 1y ago
You can get a round one. Or you can make yet another wonky shaped one to add to the collection, as ended up being the case with JSON.
- simonw 1y ago
  What makes JSON wonky? Personally the only thing I miss from it is support for binary data - you end up having to base64 binary content which is a little messy.
  - idle_zealot 1y ago
    Quoted keys, strict comma rules, very limited data types, are the main ones. There are a host of others if you view it through the lenses of user-read/write, and a different set of issues if you view it as a machine data interface. Trying to combine the two seems fundamentally misguided.
    - collinmanderson 1y ago
      I consider JSON's very limited data types to be part of what makes it so good.
  - Myrmornis 1y ago
    Lack of comments seems like a big one seeing as it's so widely used for "configuration". It's a big enough downside that VSCode and others have violated it via ad-hoc extensions of the format. The comma rules introduce diff noise on unrelated lines.
- 1y ago

rocqua 1y ago

I came here to (wrongly) say that wooden disks were never used as wheels, and that ot all started with spokes. Some checking showed that, in fact, the oldest known wheels have a lot of solid disks. E.g: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ljubljana_Marshes_Wheel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ljubljana_Marshes_Wheel Hopefully this can disabuse others of similar mistaken memory.

sashimi-houdini 1y ago

I also like Dan Luu's take (starting with a Joel Spolsky quote) “Find the dependencies — and eliminate them.” When you're working on a really, really good team with great programmers, everybody else's code, frankly, is bug-infested garbage, and nobody else knows how to ship on time. We had a similar attitude, although I'd say that we were a bit more humble. We didn't think that everyone else was producing garbage but, we also didn't assume that we couldn't produce something comparable to what we could buy for a tenth of the cost. From talking to folks at some competitors, there was a pretty big cultural difference between how we operated and how they operated. It simply didn't occur to them that they didn't have to buy into the standard American business logic that you should focus on your core competencies, that you can think through whether or not it makes sense to do something in-house on the merits of the particular thing instead of outsourcing your thinking to a pithy saying.[0] [0] https://danluu.com/nothing-works/ https://danluu.com/nothing-works/