Hacker News Reader

Comment by endemic | Hacker News Reader

I don't think that's what he's advocating: he's just saying that every dependency you have is another thing you have to worry about, so why not try to limit them as much as possible? Obviously it's impractical sometimes, and that's OK, as long as you understand the consequences.

View on HN

Every dependency you have is another thing that people besides yourself can worry about with you or for you

Need to do X? If you write your own library that does X, chances are you'll be the only one to ever work on it. Need a new feature? You have to stop working on your actual project and implement that feature. Found a bug? No one else will fix it for you.

If you depend on a library that thousands of other people also use that does X, if you do find a feature you need that it doesn't have, open a ticket, someone will likely do that work for you. More often than not, that feature already exists, all you have to do is read the docs. If you find a bug, report it and and wait for it to get fixed, but there's also nothing stopping you from fixing it yourself and submitting a pull request.

A better way to view this is that if libraries are kept small, then you can pick a more granular set of dependencies than say a larger library that includes the kitchen sink.

I agree with most comments here that it's not a good idea to reinvent the wheel everywhere, but when all you want is a wheel, and not the entire car, it's ideal that we have a way to just include the wheel.

But... That would require you to read somebody else's code. /s

Classic case of NIH syndrome.

Every line of code you write is something you have to worry about. Every dependency you use is something that (in theory) other people are also worried about.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com