Re: This mirrors the real software world
Today we actually [write] very little original code.
True in many domains, but not all of them. I've written thousands of lines of original code in the past year - and I really do mean original, not adapted from exemplars. In some cases I was reimplementing algorithms from scratch because flaws in the existing implementations were too extensive to make refactoring worthwhile; in others I was implementing new functionality.
I'm happy to use libraries, frameworks, and suitably-licensed open-source code where appropriate, and they do supply a lot of the low-level functionality - basic data structures and algorithms; but for the kind of work I primarily do, there's plenty of original code that needs to be written as well.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
