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posts for october 30, 2007.

every time i plan to start a new project, let it be a web project, a programming job, a latex document (or a combination of those), i’m thinking hard on whether to use something already existing as a base or whether to do everything myself, from the scratch. for latex documents, i usually reuse macros i’ve written myself. for programs, i use libraries like opengl and zlib (two random names coming to my mind, there are of course a lot more), i reuse my own code, and write the rest from scratch. for this blog, i used wordpress, for usage statistics i use phpopentracker. and, of course, i use php and mysql as backends. even though i could implement the whole stuff myself. if i just would have enough time… but i don’t, and so i have to cope with all the restrictions, specialities, whatever these programs and libraries are throwing at me.
the reason why i’m thinking about this at the moment is a new project of mine i’m thinking about, which i’m planning to code more or less from the scratch (using, of course, some backend stuff like php, mysql, phpopentracker, you name it). i just started drawing some sketches, like its logical structure with hints on the physical implementation. sometimes i wonder whether i should spend more time on such things. despite there probably already exists a system which does exactly what i want, making one yourself is way more fun. although its also way more work.
let’s see if i manage to pull this one through… wish me luck.