There’s a good list of reasons why we do this, but it leaves out the biggest one, at least for me: building stuff is fun. Reinventing stuff is fun. It’s the most natural hammer to reach for whenever I encounter a nail. Not necessarily the best, but such is life.
I try to explain this on every post that complains about software reinventors. Why should people from the 60s and 70s get to have all the fun? So far my efforts have been in vain.
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There’s a good list of reasons why we do this, but it leaves out the biggest one, at least for me: building stuff is fun. Reinventing stuff is fun. It’s the most natural hammer to reach for whenever I encounter a nail. Not necessarily the best, but such is life.
I try to explain this on every post that complains about software reinventors. Why should people from the 60s and 70s get to have all the fun? So far my efforts have been in vain.
Finding a thing, using it, finding out it sucks, and then making your own version that's better and doesn't suck, is an entirely natural instinct.
It is, but we often skip over those first three parts and go straight to making our own version.