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I am having discussions with my Japanese friend about developing a new
computer application. I want to suggest to him to not write the code from
scratch but to use other libraries as our base. How can I say that?

There are a lot of words about starting. Which is the best suit for my
context?

For example:

> 元から,  
>  初めから,  
>  最初から,  
>  端から.
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2011-09-20T08:45:06.407
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2012-12-25T22:42:13.110
2011-09-20T14:13:28.310
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question
word-choice words
How to translate "from scratch"
All of 元から, 初めから, 最初から, 端から refer to "the beginning", which all imply it is a
beginning of something that is already there. For example, when you talk about
a botched marriage using "最初から結婚しなければよかった", you are talking about a marriage
that has already happened; it has a beginning.

On the other hand, when you are just about to suggest to your friend about how
to start writing the computer application, the application code is not yet
there. There is no beginning to refer to. Even in English, we would use
"writing from scratch", not "writing from beginning". It would be a different
case if you need to rewrite code that already exists. In that case, the code
already has "a beginning", thus you can use "rewriting the code from the
beginning".

So, how do we say "writing from scratch" in Japanese? One expression you can
use is **"一から"** or even "ゼロから".

> [ウェブサイトのレイアウトを一から作成するPhotoshopのチュートリアル集](http://coliss.com/articles/build-
> websites/operation/design/photoshop-tutorial-web-layout-4.html)
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2011-09-20T09:08:15.860
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answer
I agree with Lukman that the common phrase in Japanese for “from scratch” is
一から, and sometimes ゼロから. I would just like to note that some people use
スクラッチから for this meaning. It might be understood as a literal translation, but
it seems a little different to me because the loanword スクラッチ is seldom used
for the meaning “a mark made on a surface with a pointed object”—implying that
replacing the English word “scratch” with the loanword スクラッチ does not really
serve the purpose of translation. I personally find the phrase スクラッチから
strange, but it is used by some people anyway.

By the way, in model building, some people use the word スクラッチ itself for the
meaning “the process of building something from scratch” as in フルスクラッチで作る
(build (a model) completely from scratch). This usage seems to arise from the
words スクラッチビルド (scratch building) and フルスクラッチビルド (full scratch building).
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