Dispassionate Paraphrase

An example made up for the occasion. We have two folks engaged in a discussion, Jeff and Tony. Tony starts the DispassionateParaphrase page:

On Some Other Page, Jeff, you said:

There is no possible way that building new Components makes sense in a real application. Too much time is spent building things you don't need, while the poor customer sits in a corner wondering where the business value is going to come into the equation. Use existing components exclusively. Anyone who does otherwise is a tiny fool.

Let me try to pull the idea out of the passion here. Here's what I get:

There's a risk that too much time will be spent investing in building new Components, while the actual problem to be solved waits. It's better to use existing components exclusively.

Now let's explore a few notions here:

1. Under what circumstances does component-building investment pay off, and when does it not?
2. Is there a way to grow components incrementally, reducing the risk? I think so. See Component Growing page.
3. What about components you seem to need but they don't exist in the market? How can you be sure you need them? What do you do then?
4. What if your company seems to have infinite money for programmers but none for buying software?

Let's start discussing these dimensions separately here and see whether we can bring them back together. If the sections get too large, we'll split them into sub-pages.

Please feel free to modify or add to this list. --Tony

Italics above mine. More when I get more ideas. What do you think about the questions? --Jeff