Why do Developers code everything from scratch?
Developers do not necessarily code everything from scratch, but having ownership of the technical design and architecture is important when writing software. There is a vast amount of code available online in the form of open source software that engineers use to learn from or re-use others´ work, while building new things.
Building anything from scratch, ensures control or ownership – Readymade libraries and tools that can be free or licensed surely inspire all software engineers.
When the task is simple enough to build and doesn’t have external dependencies, it’s an obvious decision to code from scratch. But when an engineer decides to use external third party libraries, they would assume such code is self-sustaining and comes with regular updates for bug fixes and enhancements.. It would be a nightmare for an engineer to refactor apps or products that are based on deprecated technology.
Developers who have the luxury of time, have a need for control, have complex goals or where there are no generic libraries available, choose to build from scratch.
There is a time and place to buy or build things – in whole or in part. It would not be the same coding goals or situations to code from scratch or use existing libraries or tools available on the vast internet.