I am confused as to whether it is acceptable to use code produced by other people for something that is related to me and my creations. Do i have to resort to coding my portfolio website with pure css and js to demonstrate my credibility and experience as a candidate employee? Does the ideology of 'using other people's tools to create a better product' apply here in this context, or would it be considered plagiarism? Is there some sort of gradient as to how much i should use third party tools for my website for it be ethically appropriate, if it all?
Yes, you should use third party tools (just don't take credit for them, maybe even credit the tools used in the footer). In a real job, you would leverage third party libraries to work more efficiently, so you should do the same when showing off your skills.
Yep, someone that insists on writing everything from scratch is sort of a red flag to me. Web development is mostly about knowing how to use third party packages and building on top of that.
Insists != for practice.
I've been mulling a "reverse engineer" for practice. But yeah, for the portfolio, you want to use the same ethos as you would use in the job
That would be a demonstration of your ability with said libraries/frameworks. I don’t see the issue. Unless you are talking about using just the tools with little customization, then it wouldn’t be very impressive. Still not an issue tho.
It's only ethical if you build the server yourself from materials found in nature.
To program from scratch you must first create the universe
All of society is built upon the foundation laid by others. As long as you're not misleading people into thinking you created something you didn't, I don't see any problem.
Would you use them when building things for a client? If yes, then yes. No one gets mad at a carpenter for buying nails.
Of course. It also shows that you know how to make use of third party libraries, which a lot of employers like to see.
but then why would they ask candidates to write functions like binary tree traversal from scratch during interviews? /s
