Comment on Rationality Quotes August 2012

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 17:24:37 GMT

For example, trying to write a function to do date calculations, when there's a perfectly good library.

One obvious caveat is when the cost of finding, linking/registering and learning-to-use the library is greater than the cost of writing + debugging a function that suits your needs (of course, subject to the planning fallacy when doing estimates beforehand). More pronounced when the language/API/environment in question is one you're less fluent/comfortable with.

In this optic, "reinventing the wheel" should be further restricted to when an irrational decision was taken to do something with less expected utility - cost than simply using the existing version(s).

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