Reinventing wheels (was RE: [xml-dev] Slow xml-dev day (is everyb odyworking?))

["Champion, Mike" <Mike.Champion@SoftwareAG-USA.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeff Lowery [mailto:jlowery@scenicsoft.com]
> Sent: Monday, October 15, 2001 8:09 PM
> To: xml-dev
> Subject: [xml-dev] Slow xml-dev day (is everybody working?)
> 
> 
> Seems like someone should start a haiku thread.

No! Anything but that! I'll start a flame war! 

How about Joel Sapolsky's musings "In Defense of Not-Invented-Here Syndrome"
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/stories/storyReader$402

'I stopped by Andrew Kwatinetz's office. He was my manager at the time and
taught me everything I know. "The Excel development team will never accept
it," he said. "You know their motto? 'Find the dependencies -- and eliminate
them.' They'll never go for something with so many dependencies."
In-ter-est-ing. I hadn't known that. I guess that explained why Excel had
its own C compiler.
By now I'm sure many of my readers are rolling on the floor laughing. "Isn't
Microsoft stupid," you're thinking, "they refused to use other people's code
and they even had their own compiler just for one product."
Not so fast, big boy! The Excel team's ruggedly independent mentality also
meant that they always shipped on time, their code was of uniformly high
quality ...'

What's this got to do with XML?

a) You're more likely to understand the syntax if you build the parser
yourself, and less likely to write a 300 page specification if YOU are
responsible for implementing it ...

b)The rule "find the [inter] dependencies and eliminate them" would force
the vast majority of the W3C specs to be re-written, no?  
 
c) Reinventing the wheel means never having to say "sorry, that's how the
W3C says to do it?" [a feeble pun, for anyone senile enough to remember the
tearjerker "Love Story"]