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I take a more selfish approach on this debate. I nearly always write my own code to do something, even when a library already exists... just so I can understand the problem well. Then, when I finally decide to use a specific library, I understand why they're doing something in a specific way more clearly.

Maybe not the most advisable route for commercial work, but one that keeps me satisfied.

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You're going to need to understand how the system works regardless. So you can spend the time learning how the internals of someone else's library works, or you can learn how to solve the problem and write your own. In my experience, there is rarely a difference between the two. But when I write my own code, I know how to make it integrate with all my other code better.

I do the same thing all the time and I'm trying to break this habit since it might be holding me back. I'm trying to realize that I can learn a lot from someone else's work and by diving in and learning the ins and outs and even reading the library's source code I can learn a lot more than experimenting around trying to produce similar functionality myself. Reading code is far more tedious though than being able to creatively experiment with something. The creative learning is important I'm just trying to use it in other applications than re-inventing a wheel that already works well

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