Endless Paradigm

Oh man, this is the first time I've been able to ward off a rant, woohoo!

Anyway, just going to post how much I feel like a noob using any library of the sorts to help me with programming. I know, it sounds really dumb to hate using libraries and API's but I always feel like I should be learning how to implement most things.

Just curious if anyone shares my rather stupid feelings, I usually go with "if I feel I can do it then I shouldn't use a library". Of course, this leads to a lot of wasted time and what not, but isn't the learning experience the good part about it?

Oh well, maybe I'll get off my high horse and accept the fact that I need to use things made by others to put something together, like a graphics library.

That'd be pretty difficult to implement.

E.g. Using regular expressions to find a specific tag in a webpage for scraping, when you can use one of the many libraries that people made for PHP that allow you to do this much faster (and without some crazy regular expressions). I'm still spoon at working with regular expressions in PHP, partly because testing is always a bitch when it comes to all this web/scripting stuff. :/

Why to use libraries:
- it's probably been tested/used more than your code
- someone else maintains it for you
- probably designed better than you would do it
- this includes stuff like speed, security etc
- saves time & effort (obviously)
- in a scripting environment, native code runs faster than your own version
- sometimes you don't exactly have a choice (eg integration with another application)

For learning, yeah implement it yourself if you want to, or to boost the nerd cred, but in real world situations, it's generally better to use stuff that's already there (if you can).  Main reason you wouldn't would possibly be:
- licensing issues
- you want something that the library can't offer (and you can't simply modify it)

no1 rule of programming, if it's done for you by someone else why are you doing it again?
libraries are made to make your code easier to read, safer and more robust.
suck it up man, it'll pay dividends in the end.

I too do not like using pre-assembled code and would rather make it all from scratch.

I program on windows so everything I use comes from an API or a Library on some level...
I don't have the patience to reinvent the wheel that is the windows forms library...

as far as externally maintained libraries, I don't necessarily like to use them, but they can be pretty powerful and offer far easier/better solutions

also, simply put, there are certain sides of programming I never wish to see