Posted by The Natural Philosopher on 12/26/07 14:25

Puzzled wrote:
> 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.

Well I have to say I symnpathise,..but in specific case it can work well.

If there is merely one bug to fix ore one small feature to add, its good.

Otherwise, yes, by and large after many years of experience,I have come
to the general conclusion that its shorter to rewrite it, using the
IDEAS of someone else's code. Not the code itself. And lifting the
better written chunks in toto.

In other words. flagrant plagiarization,rather than adaptation, is the
name of the game.

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