It got me thinking about the more general idea of building something in software versus using a pre-built solution. When do you go with one instead of the other? How is that decision made?

After thinking about it, it really comes down to two things:

1. Does the pre-existing solution fit what you need?
2. If not, can it be extended?

What I realized is that spending time on making my own custom software with all of the bells and whistles wasn’t proving my merit, it was getting in the way of me building other, more exiting things that hadn’t been done a million times over before.

It made me realize that, while every decision is different, in many cases it can be far better to take a pre-existing solution and extending it versus building your own from scratch. Sure, it’s not your code, but your overall productivity (the ultimate measure in many ways), can be greatly enhanced from it.

Granted, that second one is probably due to my inexperience with the framework, but still, that learning curve cannot be ignored. Instead, I went looking for something with similar practices and I found CodeIgniter (I also did some work with CakePHP, but the automagic this still bothered me a little).

Sure, I work in ASP.NET normally, but I still feel in total control there (at least most of the time).

Anyway, that was why I decided to make my site in CodeIgniter – the easy-of-use and simple tools, while still feeling in total control of what was going on underneath.