Interesting read. As with all things, absolute extremes must be avoided. If we stop and work out solutions to problems already worked out every time, when would we find time to build upon the solutions? Transfer of knowledge is one way, we as a species succeed even with the limited lives we have.<p>In programming, for example, while it is important to learn how basics work, if I try to write everything from scratch instead of using a library, I am doing it at the expense of furthering human capability. I mean, I just need to know, that I _could_ whip something up, if it didn't exist. Since it does, my time would be better spent on using it to create something even more functional.