It may be, but there's never anything wrong with competition either. Everything I've ever read learning PHP has always said "don't do this yourself! Other people have done it! Use their work!". I say, I'll learn from their work, yes, and then do my own for the most part, because creating an entire application out of bits and pieces of other peoples work feels to me like cheating. It's not mine.

Also, there's nothing wrong with reinventing the wheel sometimes. If the first caveman made it square, where would we be if the second hadn't made it round? Or the third made it out of rubber?
-m