Dismantling technical debt and hubris

Software development is riddled with people who choose to write their solutions, even when there are valid existing alternatives. These developers are confident their solution is better. Most times they are wrong. This duplication and unnecessary activity lead to an accumulation of technical debt that is often owned by others. Examples are drawn from 25 years (as old as Java itself) of technical debt and hubris in the software verification space.
This is a story about reducing roll-your-own solutions, choosing existing open source tools, and being humble in environments that often favor self-promotion over doing the right thing.