The real interesting corollary here is that no matter what level you are at, you will probably want to leverage a language that's as powerful as possible, since

The real interesting corollary here is that no matter what level you are at, you will probably want to leverage a language that's as powerful as possible, since you will be able to accomplish more with less lines of code[1]. A few months back, I expressed disappointment with Google Maps' dropping of support for displaying KMZs from other servers, and my intent to put together a replacement. When I finally got around to it, I found a JS library[2] (plus plugin[3]) that allowed me to replicate what I needed in about 10 lines of JS[4]. Of course, this is more the power of leveraging a library (and public tile servers), but I think it's still instructive to my point. [1] - http://www.paulgraham.com/power.html http://www.paulgraham.com/power.html [2] - http://leafletjs.com/ http://leafletjs.com/ [3] - https://github.com/mpetazzoni/leaflet-gpx https://github.com/mpetazzoni/leaflet-gpx [4] - http://hardcorehackers.com/~npsimons/photos/2014/07-13:%20Owens%20Point/gpstrack.html http://hardcorehackers.com/~npsimons/photos/2014/07-13:%20Ow...