I also often start but never finish a game programming project, and reinvent the wheel a lot (though not as far as reimplementing C++ strings, more like 3D and

I also often start but never finish a game programming project, and reinvent the wheel a lot (though not as far as reimplementing C++ strings, more like 3D and UI libraries and such). Don't forget to open source everything, and maybe one of your reinventions of the wheel may land you a good job. And maybe this means you're meant to be a systems programmer, not a game programmer.