[sanderjd]

I very rarely see a "hey I made this!" post here that doesn't include one or more comments along the lines of "this already exists!". I don't mind these sorts of comments when they tell me something I didn't know - "you can achieve something similar by doing coodle with well-known tool doodle!", "there is somewhat-obscure tool foodle that does exactly this!" - there are some comments like that in this thread. What I dislike is when these sorts of comments are along the lines of, "you should have just done the thing that you made the tool to avoid having to do!". It is just dismissal and leaves nobody the wiser.

It seems delusional to think that this sort of comment is somehow a good learning experience for a library author. Everyone knows that you shouldn't reinvent the wheel, but there are reasonable disagreements on what exactly that means.