It would only be "reinventing" the wheel if it was (or, at least claimed to be) an independent first-time creation of a blog engine without prior knowledge of them existing.
So, unless we're talking about something like that (unlikely) there's no such thing as "reinventing the wheel" in real life.
There's just "creating a different wheel". BBS, Enkei and all the wheel companies are not "reinventing the wheel". The create a new version of wheel.
Even if it's boring and similar to existing things, it's not a re-invention. That would be like calling another CRUD app that is "re-inventing the CRUD".
I thought the implication in "reinventing the wheel" in software was that the current de-facto implementation obviously got it perfectly right, so trying to improve on that would just be absurd. Of course, i'm sure people were saying that when someone decided what the world needed was a better Movable Type.
And to go all the way down the pedantic rabbithole, there's never been software which is elegant or utilitarian enough to be worthy of considering a "wheel" in that regard.
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That's the point: while Ghost claims to be a new, better wheel, it actually seems (to some people) to be reinventing it.
It would only be "reinventing" the wheel if it was (or, at least claimed to be) an independent first-time creation of a blog engine without prior knowledge of them existing.
So, unless we're talking about something like that (unlikely) there's no such thing as "reinventing the wheel" in real life.
There's just "creating a different wheel". BBS, Enkei and all the wheel companies are not "reinventing the wheel". The create a new version of wheel.
Even if it's boring and similar to existing things, it's not a re-invention. That would be like calling another CRUD app that is "re-inventing the CRUD".
I thought the implication in "reinventing the wheel" in software was that the current de-facto implementation obviously got it perfectly right, so trying to improve on that would just be absurd. Of course, i'm sure people were saying that when someone decided what the world needed was a better Movable Type.
And to go all the way down the pedantic rabbithole, there's never been software which is elegant or utilitarian enough to be worthy of considering a "wheel" in that regard.
If you're going to complain that it's not actually reinventing, then can I point out that Ghost is not a wheel, either?
It's an idiom with a known meaning. It doesn't have to be literally true.
Yes, but the problem is that it's not a good idiom either, for the reasons explained:
It's based on a broken metaphor, and it doesn't reflect how things work on software.
They could have at least said "they made just another blog engine".