Do it once.

Every time I look up how to do certain tasks in computer programming, I always hear the phrase “Don’t rebuild the wheel.” I’m here to tell you that everyone is wrong.

Your first thought will be that I’m going to talk about the importance of leaving the baggage from existing frameworks where they belong, or how adding using everyone else’s code will weigh down your site, but if I’m honest with myself, I’m not knowledgable enough to talk about something like that. I’m early enough in my learning to be unable to acknowledge the perks of having a localized library rather than a google API attachment and green enough to not recognize the whole debate on class inheritance versus prototyping (probably saying something wrong there, too) for java programmers.

To all new to programming, and all who are working hard to teach themselves- do it once. Build the wheel once and never do it again.

I started teaching myself CSS a few months ago, and whenever I asked a question, I was pointed toward a multitude of libraries that, if I learned them, would give me exactly what I wanted. I would add each one as a short line in my <header> with a short comment description.

Over time, I realized I learned nothing at all about CSS, and everything about all these little libraries. These things that I would use once and never use again.

With each language I learned, my list of tasks and features grew with their possibilities. And my list of new things to learn grew with them. If I had just started at the very beginning, with a short definition and explanation instead of a quick answer, things would of been simpler.

So build the wheel. Do it once. You must see how things work on the inside to see how anything works at all, and the only way to learn is to build. Build everything once, then build it better. Throw the rest away.

Then, one day- when you are old and wise- you can stop reinventing the wheel.