I've been running a Discord server for about four and a half years now. When I started streaming during the pando, I had no idea that I would end up building a community. Hell, I'd never even used Discord before. I only knew what it was because I had to stop my students from using it.
"Why are you reimplementing $feature when you can just import $library? You're reinventing the wheel!"
I think the warning against reinventing wheels—and presumably other simple machines—has blinded us to more subtle truths about when it's okay to build something that already exists, but closer to home.
Long before I knew anything about pivot charts or data science, I wondered what it would be like to use a spreadsheet in three dimensions.