Comment by munificent

> No, your favorite movie is not crap because the creators didn't grind their own lens.

One of the reasons Barry Lyndon is over 50 years old and still looks like no other movie today is because Kubrick tracked down a few lenses originally designed for NASA and had custom mounts built for them to use with cinema cameras.

https://neiloseman.com/barry-lyndon-the-full-story-of-the-fa...

> Popular and highly acclaimed games not at crap because they didn't write their own physics engine (Zelda uses Havok)

Super Mario Bros is known for having a surprisingly subtle and complex physics system that enabled the game to feel both challenging and fair even for players very new to consoles. Celeste a newer game also famous for being very difficult yet not feeling punishing does something similar:

https://maddymakesgames.com/articles/celeste_and_towerfall_p...

> or their own game engine (Plenty of great games use Unreal or Unity)

And Minecraft doesn't, which is why few other games at the time of its release felt and played like it.

You're correct that no one builds everything from scratch all the time. However, if all you ever do is cobble a few pre-made things together, I think you'll discover that nothing you make is ever that interesting or enduring in value. Sure, it can be useful, and satisfying. But the kinds of things that really leave a mark on people, that affect them deeply, always have at least some aspect where the creator got obsessive and went off the deep end and did their own thing from scratch.

Further, you'll never learn what a transformative experience it can be to be that creator who gets obsessive about a thing. You'll miss out on discovering the weird parts of your own soul that are more fascinated by some corner of the universe than anyone else is.

I have a lot of regrets in my life, but I don't regret the various times I've decided I've deeply dug into some thing and doing it from scratch. Often, that has turned out later to be some of the most long-term useful things I've done even though it seemed like a selfish indulgence at the time.

Of course, it's your life. But consider that there may be a hidden cost to always skimming along across the tops of the stacks of things that already exist out there. There is growth in the depths.