system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How to explain to managers why 'just copy from how someone else does it' is not necessarily trivial?

Sometimes my less technical managers say something along the lines of:

>Can we see how other similar applications do it, and just use that?

Generally this is in response to me saying something is not trivial to do, and cannot be done prior to next release. The implication seems to be that if we could just see how someone else do it, we could simply copy and paste it into our system. These are not one-off codes that can live isolated, as when I am saying "this is not trivial" that usually means it requires code that has to be integrated into multiple places and the system overall. 

Is there an analogy or another good way to explain why code from other semi-similar applications that evolved completely independently cannot just be trivially copy-and-pasted in?
gpt
Layman here but let me give it a shot. Building A is them. Building B is you. Building A has a toilet. Your boss wants a toilet for building B. Building A already has all the necessary plumbing to install this full functioning toilet. Building B requires you to tear up the floor, install piping, connect to the main, etc.

So maybe tell your boss that you can put the code in but it won't function and may cause a mound of shit.