If you wanted to grow your wood, plane and dry it yourself, etc... then you'd be "hard way" building a table.
I assume you use tools?
We aren't talking about the same thing: I stated "I don't think tables are the hard thing."
Note the word "the" in front of "hard thing" -- I'm referencing the article we're discussing, which mentions "the hard thing"
For example, start from a felled tree, use only hand tools, and assemble using medieval joinery techniques. Building a table that way is quite hard by modern standards.
Now if you'll excuse me I need to get back to writing this date parsing library in assembly.
The hard thing isn’t building the date parsing library in assembly, it’s learning assembly well enough to do it in the first place.
I’m not sure where this discussion began but I was rebelling against everyone who says “just buy it” in regards to anything hard to do.
There is difference between “never build your own for a professional need” and “never build your own”.
I build my own stuff if it is for my own purposes, and I use proper tools and libraries for my professional work.
There is a difference between things that are difficult and things that just take a lot of work.
My most valuable resource is time. Sure, I could learn more low-level aspects of my craft ... and sometimes I find it useful to do so.
When I focus on doing the hardest, already solved things by re-implementing them my own way, what value am I adding?
I've never met a client who cared about a library or how I did something in code - until it broke. Then, they didn't care who wrote it, they just cared it started working again.