[mongojunction]

That sounds like it comes from some specific experience you had... but it's pretty uncalled for to apply it so confidently to someone you don't know. Don't be mean, right?

Actually, another view is that there's nothing wrong with tinkering and DIY. Perl, JS, Redis all came from people hacking their own solutions (as far as I know).

Also, many big software orgs build extensive internal tools themselves.

Plus, making your own stuff is a lot of fun. You should try it sometime (if you haven't already) :)

[jfkebwjsbx]

There is nothing bad about writing your own solutions.

What is bad is putting them in production when you don't have a clue about the domain.

[mongojunction]

Being ignorant didn't make you a prima donna tho, as above says.

Also, they have to have some clue about the domain, because the domain is their own problem and they're writing a solution for it. So I don't think we can really just someone as not having any clue about their own engineering challenges.... especially if they're working solutions to them....

Antirez said literally he didn't know about existing solutions when he went to write redis, and he and redis are awesome. nothing bad about that

but I get your point about bad solutions are bad but that's sort of a tautology, doesn't add much value, and who are we to judge someone else's solutions are bad we don't know everything about their use case.

Again... even if we can say that you choosing someone else's technology for your problem is not a good solution we just can't criticize the author because it's your responsibility what you choose. so I just don't think it's valid to criticize the author

[jfkebwjsbx]

> they have to have some clue about the domain, because the domain is their own problem

They can be lifelong experts on their problem, yet have no clue about writing a database engine and low-level programming in general.

> Antirez said literally he didn't know about existing solutions when he went to write redis

Nobody is born with knowledge. The difference is that Antirez studied previous solutions, studied how to do it, and then applied that knowledge right.

Instead, that person did the equivalent of building a bridge disregarding everything humans learnt about it since the Roman empire. It will not be a surprise if the bridge ends up collapsing.