I don't know about reinventing wheels, but I must confess to having written a chess move parser in every language I've ever learned. And truth be known, more than one version. The smallest was in lisp, the fastest in assembler---after so many years it has become a ritual, a sort of necessary task before I even pretend to 'know' the language of the moment. So I suppose I'm guilty of re-wheeling, in fact re-wheeling the same wheel. I guess I do know about reinventing wheels after all.
--hsm
"Never try to teach a pig to sing...it wastes your time and it annoys the pig."