reinventing the wheel

http://hardware.processing.org/

The Processing language and environment is used for software development with the Arduino controller board.

I have been trying to put together the board recently. This process itself has been a learning experience.

After the hardware is ready, I'll need to decide what to do with it. Many projects are described online. Or, I could try to think a use for it for something of my own. I had some ideas before buying it, but now it seems a path that is easy and well documented is going to be better than a path that is more interesting but not as well described.

So the result of this exercise will be a duplicate of limited usefulness. I will be reinventing the wheel but learning something by doing. It will cost me time, money, and effort. I don't believe it will be for ego, but this is not something every one knows how to do. Some advocate reinventing the wheel as much as possible when learning to get insight into the problem and solution. I'll still look for software to reuse.

Recently an end to the Chandler project was reported in CNet. Their goal was a new solution to personal information management. They did not want to reinvent the wheel, but did not end up with a breakthrough.