http://ayende.comAyende @ RahienCopyright (C) Ayende Rahien 2004 - 2021 (c) 202660Trackback from http://dotmad.blogspot.com/2007/05/writing-oss-relieves-pain.html http://ayende.com/2421/when-does-it-make-sense-to-reinvent-the-wheel#comment10http://ayende.com/2421/when-does-it-make-sense-to-reinvent-the-wheel#comment10Tue, 22 May 2007 22:32:43 GMTTrackback from [](http://dotmad.blogspot.com/2007/05/writing-oss-relieves-pain.html)http://ayende.com/2421/when-does-it-make-sense-to-reinvent-the-wheel#comment9http://ayende.com/2421/when-does-it-make-sense-to-reinvent-the-wheel#comment9Tue, 22 May 2007 22:31:54 GMTWhen people build stuff for the sake of building without even checking what's out there. It is then reinventing the wheel really isn't well thought through. Building stuff for the sake of filling an experienced gap or building them as part of your developer training is really a good enough reason for Ayendes Square wheels :P Although, do that on your spare time. Don't let your customers know that your creating another round wheel from scratch on his bill. http://ayende.com/2421/when-does-it-make-sense-to-reinvent-the-wheel#comment8http://ayende.com/2421/when-does-it-make-sense-to-reinvent-the-wheel#comment8Tue, 22 May 2007 10:07:35 GMTOren, are you stealing my post titles. :) http://intrepidnoodle.com/blog/show/10.aspx For me it makes sense to reinvent the wheel when the complexity of an existing framework seems too great. However often once fully understanding the problem domain (which tends to come through the act of implementing a new framework) you do occasionally find that some of the complexity is inherent. http://ayende.com/2421/when-does-it-make-sense-to-reinvent-the-wheel#comment7http://ayende.com/2421/when-does-it-make-sense-to-reinvent-the-wheel#comment7Tue, 22 May 2007 08:23:28 GMTI'm so glad you did Rhino.Mocks! And Castle just rocks my socks... I've been working on two components to push out to the Castle community. Castle.FlexBridge is a Flex / .Net bridge that actually takes advantage of .Net idioms, handles generics and is open and extensible. (If you've looked at the alternatives you'll understand why I'm doing this.) Castle.Components.Scheduler is a generic job scheduling service. I'm currently providing two implementations, one that supports in-memory job management and another that supports persistence and clustering with SqlServer. (I can't believe I haven't been able to find robust and lightweight components that do the job in .Net.) Unfortunately Quartz.Net is not mature enough to satisfy my requirements and I need this functionality /right now/. I'm hoping I'll be able to plug Quartz.Net in as an alternative scheduler implementation later on. http://ayende.com/2421/when-does-it-make-sense-to-reinvent-the-wheel#comment6http://ayende.com/2421/when-does-it-make-sense-to-reinvent-the-wheel#comment6Tue, 22 May 2007 07:09:03 GMTWendy, I think that I have some posts that describe that way that I went through when I build Rhino Mocks, it was high annoyance with NMock that pushed me to use EasyMock.NET, then the interface for EasyMock.Net really annoyed me, so I refactored that, then I hit some issues related to COM proxies not always being the same thing, so I just rewrote the thing from scratch. Come to think about, it was the whole process that was annoying, not NMock on its on. http://ayende.com/2421/when-does-it-make-sense-to-reinvent-the-wheel#comment5http://ayende.com/2421/when-does-it-make-sense-to-reinvent-the-wheel#comment5Tue, 22 May 2007 05:42:19 GMTLet me just chime in to say I am very glad you didn't just stick with nMock. Rhino Mocks is the best thing to happen to unit testing since... since MbUnit. ;) http://ayende.com/2421/when-does-it-make-sense-to-reinvent-the-wheel#comment4http://ayende.com/2421/when-does-it-make-sense-to-reinvent-the-wheel#comment4Tue, 22 May 2007 04:34:22 GMTIf everyone just used what was already available there would be no evolution of software. There would be no new design patterns, no new frameworks and no new languages. By using the same argument everyone is using against "reinventing" the wheel one could just as well argue we should be doing all our web development with CGI programs written in C. It worked just fine! Why use anything else? There really should be only this simple rule when it comes to using an existing framework or rolling your own; Does something that exists currently solve your problem and work for you? If yes, then use it. If not, then roll your own. And by work, I do not only mean function. A framework only *works* for you if it does what you need it to do, interacts with the rest of your application in the way you want it to, and is able to be used (coded) in a way you are happy and comfortable with. http://ayende.com/2421/when-does-it-make-sense-to-reinvent-the-wheel#comment3http://ayende.com/2421/when-does-it-make-sense-to-reinvent-the-wheel#comment3Tue, 22 May 2007 03:03:40 GMTI don't think annoying as hell is descriptive enough for the pain of nMock. There was a clear need for a better solution... I'd call it an evolution, not a rebuild. http://ayende.com/2421/when-does-it-make-sense-to-reinvent-the-wheel#comment2http://ayende.com/2421/when-does-it-make-sense-to-reinvent-the-wheel#comment2Tue, 22 May 2007 01:11:36 GMTLets not forget those two aren't mutually exclusive. Open source allows you to change things to work the way you want them to. Igloo navigation... http://ayende.com/2421/when-does-it-make-sense-to-reinvent-the-wheel#comment1http://ayende.com/2421/when-does-it-make-sense-to-reinvent-the-wheel#comment1Mon, 21 May 2007 23:07:43 GMT