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 Posted by Puzzled on 12/26/07 12:10 
On Wed, 26 Dec 2007 02:32:52 -0500, 
My Pet Programmer <anthony@mypetprogrammer.com> wrote: 
 
>jcoder said: 
>> starting from scratch..perhaps for better control. easy to maintain. 
> 
>Adding to that: 
>  - less links in the chain of possible breakpoints (subitem of both above) 
>  - syntactic choice in naming 
>  - performance tuning to your own specifications, rather than those of  
>an unknown entity. 
>  - configuration issues 
>  - unintended consequences - without reading through every single line  
>of code in the open source code, you can't know what it does to session,  
>other parts of your code/objects, or how it handles SQL queries/Ajax  
>calls, etc. 
>  - lack of bloat - You can spend a lot of time trimming down someone  
>else's code for your own ends and removing extraneous bits (which may or  
>may not break it), or write your own. 
 
It might only be a personal failing, but any time I've tried to 
save time by customising someone else's code, I've failed. Other 
people's code always seems to be designed to a non-intuitive 
model, badly commented, fragile, and with unnecessary couplings 
that are fiendishly difficult to unravel.   
 
I've found that, if I can use someone else's code without 
changing it, I'm ahead.  But if it wants modifying to meet my 
needs, I'm generally better off writing from scratch.
 
  
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