[mattarm]

> It's much more a matter of whether you want to do something small scale and fun, or whether you want to suck all the joy out of it by applying the same soul crushing constraints we already get paid to do in our day jobs. Bleh.

Amen. And further, what better prepares a programmer to assess the relative costs of implementing a thing vs using a library providing that thing than having attempted an implementation?

Learning by doing is a valid approach, and this can even be called fun.