This is so right and I've been making the same point to whoever will put up with hearing it...(and I'm embarrassed I don't have a link to prove it. oh well.)

Software production is so easy now that everything is becoming a .emacs file: meaning, each individual living in their own entirely personal, endlessly customizable software cocoon. As the OP says, it's "easier to build your own solution than to install an existing one" - or to learn an existing one.

The other analogy that works here, not by concidence, is Lisp programming generally. The classic knock against Lisp—one I never agreed with but which used to be heard all the time—is that Lisp with its macros is so malleable that each programmer ends up turning it into their own private language which no one else can understand.

Related to this is Mark Tarver's article "The Bipolar Lisp Programmer" which has had a lot of discussion here over the years (https://hn.algolia.com/?query=comments%3E0%20The%20Bipolar%2...). For example:

The phrase 'throw-away design' is absolutely made for the BBM* and it comes from the Lisp community. Lisp allows you to just chuck things off so easily, and it is easy to take this for granted. I saw this 10 years ago when looking for a GUI to my Lisp (Garnet had just gone West then). No problem, there were 9 different offerings. The trouble was that none of the 9 were properly documented and none were bug free. Basically each person had implemented his own solution and it worked for him so that was fine. This is a BBM attitude; it works for me and I understand it. It is also the product of not needing or wanting anybody else's help to do something.

By BBM he means "brilliant bipolar mind" - you need to read the article to get how he connects these things; whether fairly or not is a separate issue, but it's interesting that the connection to mental illness comes up in this context. The phrase "AI psychosis", in both its ironic and unironic variants, is popular for a reason right now.

[editing - bear with me...]

The Emacsification of Software