In this article Marius Andreiana says:
Please stop developing and using some obscure application when there are better alternatives. Not happy with them? Fix what's wrong, [...]. Reusing and improving existing code, not making your own, is the way. Drop the "not made here" syndrome and your 15 minutes of fame on freshmeat [...]. Starting a new project is a good way to learn to develop software, but you can also learn by doing bugfixing, unit testing, and development of new features and optimizations of existing applications. Sourceforge should start removing projects with less than 1% activity for the last six months [...].

I must admit that I'm guilty of the crime described in the article. When I started working on IlohaMail there already were alternatives out there that did at least some of what I wanted. But I went ahead and wrote everything from scratch anyway.

But why did I do this? Because I felt like it. I didn't feel like changing an existing system, even though that may have saved me time. It wasn't about practicality, it was about scratching that itch. It certainly wasn't about fame... hell, I didn't even start thinking about publicly releasing my work until 1.5 years after I started.

Three years later, the project currently has an activity percentile of 93%, but even more importantly, I've learned so much. I won't trade that experience for anything, no matter how inefficient or futile it might seem to others.