Reinventing the wheel

When someone is working on a project that utilizes an existing product, people insist that they "shouldn't reinvent the wheel." Yes, I'm about to criticize another cliche.


To an extent, this makes sense. If you are creating something, having to redevelop existing work can get in the way of what you are working on. To keep in the spirit of the cliche, imagine you are creating a new headlight for a car. You will want to test that headlight at some point in practical use. You won't need to reinvent the wheel for this. You can simply put your headlight into an existing car with existing wheels.

The problem with this saying is that it ultimately inhibits progress. Imagine everyone taking this literally. Nobody will ever reinvent the wheel. If we go further back, imagine if nobody had ever reinvented the wheel. How different would things be if we were driving around cars with wooden wheels?

Not many people are going to take this saying literally. However, the problems persist. A lot of people feel that if they are utilizing something that already exists, they should accept what they already have.

Let's go to my favorite area of discussion, education. Teachers are looking for the best way to teach children within the current system. The current system is seriously flawed in concept in execution. There are numerous components that we desperately need to reevaluate, but teachers refuse to look any deeper than the surface. Things work well enough for them already.

One example of this is the grading system. Teachers evaluate students based off of how well they do their schoolwork (quality and willingness to do the work). It in no way evaluates what a student has actually learned. Teachers feel that the grading system is sufficient. They don't want to reinvent the wheel on this particular issue even though it is clearly flawed.

There is nothing in this world that can't be improved. The ideal approach to progress is not to insist that we accept anything that works well enough as the final design. Even if we love how something works, we need periodic reevaluations. We need to take a step back and ignore what we have. If you could create a wheel without any restrictions from the past and present, what would it be like?

I'm not going to answer that question. I walk a lot of places. I ride the bus instead of driving myself. I don't even own a bicycle. While wheels are an important part of my life, I am clearly below average when it come to familiarity. I will leave the development of wheels to others. Despite my refusal to seek out the answer, I want to point out something. Most people should be able to find ways to improve the wheel if they reinvent it.