Bill Haenel

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Posted by Bill Haenel on 17-Aug-05

"Don't reinvent the wheel."

This is a phrase I've heard many, many times during my career. It finally dawned on me why that might be; I am a wheel reinventer. Most bosses don't like this, but hey, it's who I am.

Now let me ask the question, why shouldn't we reinvent the wheel? The answer can really be delivered in a pretty succinct fashion,  by asking another question: how would you improve on the wheel?

Of course the idea behind the phrase is that the wheel cannot possibly be improved upon, as it is as good as it can get. It's a circle. It's the most useful and perfect machine ever built. To try to male it better would likely result in years of frustration and anguish, followed by remark of defeat when you realize that the job cannot be done, and you've just spent yers and years and dollor upon dollar on  losing project. In short, it works, we can use it, amd let's not spend any time or money making it better given these facts.

However, not everything is as great as the wheel. Plus, I imagine if I was the person who devised a truly great improvement on the wheel, I would be extraordinarily rich and famous.

Imagine for a moment that a wheel could be better. What would that mean to our universe?

So, although there is a snowballs chance that I will reinvent the proverbial wheel in any fashion that is remotely valuable, I'll go on reinventing, on the off chance that I will actually come up with something.

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