> Reimplementing and forking are generally not value adds. Building software is today about creating/adding value.
Check out the writings of Carlota Perez[1]. She distinguishes between two phases in adoption of a technology: installation and deployment. Analogously, reimplementing adds value because you learn to make something better or faster or simpler. And you learn how to make it and can now take that knowledge elsewhere and use it in unanticipated ways.
It blew my mind a few years ago to learn that the Romans had knights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataphract. WTF, I thought they were a medieval thing. It turns out everyone in the Ancient world understood the idea that an armored person on a horse can outfight someone on foot. What was missing in Ancient Rome was the ability to teach people at scale how to fight on horseback. As a result, most cataphracts would dismount before battle. It took literally a thousand years for society to figure out how to educate people at scale on mounted combat. You don't really know how to do something just by building it once, and you don't unlock all its economic potential just by building it once. Societies have to build it over and over again, thousands of times, to really understand its value. And they gain benefits throughout the process.
> Analogously, reimplementing adds value because you learn to make something better or faster or simpler. And you learn how to make it and can now take that knowledge elsewhere and use it in unanticipated ways.
You know, there’s some truth in this. At the same time, there is only truth to the extent that the person reimplementing is actually striving to do better. I would bet that well over 99% of reimplementations are strictly worse than the thing they are mimicking.
I spent a bunch of time implementing a custom windows framework similar to WTL. It was a great learning experience. I would also say that in no way woks it have been useful to anyone for or to appear in an actual product. In most ways it was doubtless inferior to WTL. I used it for toy projects and that’s what it was.
Check out the writings of Carlota Perez[1]. She distinguishes between two phases in adoption of a technology: installation and deployment. Analogously, reimplementing adds value because you learn to make something better or faster or simpler. And you learn how to make it and can now take that knowledge elsewhere and use it in unanticipated ways.
It blew my mind a few years ago to learn that the Romans had knights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataphract. WTF, I thought they were a medieval thing. It turns out everyone in the Ancient world understood the idea that an armored person on a horse can outfight someone on foot. What was missing in Ancient Rome was the ability to teach people at scale how to fight on horseback. As a result, most cataphracts would dismount before battle. It took literally a thousand years for society to figure out how to educate people at scale on mounted combat. You don't really know how to do something just by building it once, and you don't unlock all its economic potential just by building it once. Societies have to build it over and over again, thousands of times, to really understand its value. And they gain benefits throughout the process.
[1] https://avc.com/2015/02/the-carlota-perez-framework