Advantages of Using Other People's Code

When you program a task for yourself, you get to add all the features you can imagine. When you use someone else's software, you get the features they imagined. Sometimes, the differences can be pleasant
surprises.

Getting Lazy in My Old Age

I've been a progammer for too many years to count, and I've always been one to roll my own solutions to problems, so why am I using a public blogging service instead of diving into Perl and making my own?

I have actually done it before. Back in the early days of the web, when I was introducing web use to Motorola, I had several sites that included chronological comment lists -- what is now called a blog.

But pulling old code out of my CVS archive and debugging it for my new environment would take more time and patience than I have right now. I can generate enthusiasm for a 30 minute programming task, but anything longer would take me away from my novel and I can't afford that.

So here I am, taking the lazy way out.

(Although I just might be interested in tinkering with the template settings on this thing. It is just CSS after all. Hmm.)