its true i can utilize someone else's implementation but i don't like to do that unless i at least understand their implementation myself. and typically apart from basic framework code (which is a pain) i like to implement code myself (or use code implemented by my teammates) its just hard to properly use code that you don't understand. for example i was looking at the code for an old robot fixing it up and i found the PID loop was adding the D term to the output which is exactly the opposite of what you want so i like to at least understand the basics (including the basic math) behind the code i write. Anyone can use someone else's algorithms but if they don't try to understand them they get nothing from it. so when i wrote a auto tune loop for a PID earlier this year based on zigler-nicoles it was only after reading an entire text book from a cal tech course (which was fascinating and free btw i recommend it
http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~murray/a...itle=Main_Page)