Joel Spolsky says: "The unique thing about software is that it is infinitely clonable. Once you've written a subroutine, you can call it as often as you want. This means that almost everything we do as software developers is something that has never been done before." If only that were true! We spend inordinate amounts of time digging out old infrastructure, plugging round pegs into square holes, and reinventing the wheel. For a good example, look at Joel's (excellent) CityDesk web publishing application: it's very nice, but I'd guess there are approximately zero parts which have never been done before.