Why do Pythoneers reinvent the wheel?

[Tim Daneliuk]

Stefano Masini wrote:

<SNIP>

> I wonder how many people (including myself) have implemented their own
> versions of such modules, at least once in their pythonic life. I
> indeed have my own odict (even same name! :). My own pathutils
> (different name, but same stuff). My own validate... and so forth.

As someone who implemented their own configuration mini-language
with validation, blah, blah, blah (http://www.tundraware.com/Software/tconfpy/)
I can give you a number of reasons - all valid for different people at
different times:

1) The existing tool is inadequate for the task at hand and OO subclassing
    is overrated/overhyped to fix this problem.  Even when you override
    base classes with your own stuff, you're still stuck with the larger
    *architecture* of the original design.   You really can't subclass
    your way out of that, hence new tools to do old things spring into
    being.

2) It's a learning exercise.

3) You don't trust the quality of the code for existing modules.
    (Not that *I* have this problem :-p  but some people might.)


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Tim Daneliuk     tundra at tundraware.com
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