You have to remember that the "free" code online is not actually free... If you spend 4-5 (or more..) hours looking for decent code, even if it works, although most of the free IB API projects online are abandoned and not maintained , then testing it, fixing bugs, and then putting together in your own program - you have to multiply that time by the $ amount you can earn doing something else . If you can make more than $20/hr -you've already spent more than $80 on your solution using free code, which still needs to be maintained and won't be of the same quality as a polished off-the-shelf product, and no support...
I think getting off-the-shelf products usually pays off , and you can spend your time more productively doing research or working on your strategies as opposed to debugging someone else's code just to get the data.