[crucini]

There's no absolute answer to the "build vs buy" conundrum. A lot of us are biased towards "build" and its useful to recognize that bias in our decision making. But the "buy" side often has hidden costs. In the author's case, which involves targeting multiple platforms, the "buy" side gets more attractive. In general you are deciding whether to code on platform X or on platform Y built on top of X.

Fashions come and go, and if you invest heavily on top of Y it may become "obsolete". Will you be willing to stay on Y when the developer/community has abandoned it? You may have to reinvest to port onto Y', while X remained somewhat stable.

The higher level the platform, the more likely you are to hit surprising limitations late in the process. Your role gradually transitions from technology producer to technology consumer.

Programming an AVR chip in C gives you a great feeling of space and power because the platform is so clean, while using Arduino you rapidly hit limitations and spend your time getting around them. Higher level platforms tend to make the easy things easier and the hard things very hard.

I wouldn't rule out the subjective factors. For many of us building is more fun than sorting through what others have built. The brain works a lot better when having fun, which is why MBA-style decisions about programming don't always work.