Okay, I admit it. I'm one of the people who tend to tell people not to reinvent the wheel, and yet whilst doing this I often have my incredibly crufty Inline::CPP self-built analogue of Data::Dumper sitting happily in an editor on my desktop.

Hypocritical? Maybe.

Pragmatic? Most certainly.

When I tell people to reuse existing wheels it's because it sounds like they're after something to use in a larger project, and the best way to get something that works reliably and quickly is to use the tried and tested solution. It should work well enough, and you probably won't end up with as many holes for people to poke at as if you'd just deployed the untested and unviewed by others code.

So, why am I redoing Data::Dumper? Does the original have problems? From what I gather the answer to this is 'Yes, but I don't think I'm yet up to the task of fixing them, or building a better version'. I'm doing it to develop my skills, my understanding, not to develop a product. When I do things requiring persistant data for production work I reach for the original, or another recognised varient upon the same basic theme.

Essentially I think there's three circumstances.. When you need the wheel to work properly and don't have the time or ability to build Wheel++ then go with the existing wheels; when you have time to learn new things try and develop your own version of existing things- you probably won't acheive the same quality, but you learn, and you can use the original versions more effectively when the time comes; and the final state is both having the time and ability to build the better wheel in which case go to it.

One favour though, please try and modify the existing wheels rather than creating a new one wholesale unless there's absolutely no way round it. We lesser mortals do not want to spend too long learning to build new axles!

Now, if you'll excuse me I have to hack some more at a wheel that's looking remarkably square at the moment. All part of the wheelwright's craft, I hope to get nice round wheels eventually though and when that comes I'll let others use my wheels.