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Yes. So are compilers. And web frameworks. And editors. And memory-management tools. Progress is made by no longer re-implementing and re-inventing the things that many, many people have invented and implemented in the past, and building on their work.

This doesn't mean that there is no value in learning about these things for yourself, but the packaging of knowledge in reusable tools is the only way programming progresses.




Nicely encapsulated doesn't have to imply a black-box implementation, though. I for one would like it if compilers were less black-boxy; ideally, I want to find out why my compiler does a particular thing by investigating its output, querying the API, going through the compilation steps, etc., rather than having to google some StackOverflow answer.




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