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Comment by iEchoic | Hacker News Reader

> Reusing software lets you build good things quickly

It also introduces unknown amounts of debt and increases the likelihood that you'll end up with intractable performance/quality/velocity problems that can only be solved by re-writing large portions of your codebase.

This can be a dangerous cultural value when it's not presented with caution, which it isn't here. I think it's best to present it alongside Joel Spoelsky's classic advice: "If it’s a core business function — do it yourself, no matter what".

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/10/14/in-defense-of-not-...

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Great article. I liked this quote:

```

The best advice I can offer:

If it’s a core business function — do it yourself, no matter what.

Pick your core business competencies and goals, and do those in house. If you’re a software company, writing excellent code is how you’re going to succeed. Go ahead and outsource the company cafeteria and the CD-ROM duplication. If you’re a pharmaceutical company, write software for drug research, but don’t write your own accounting package. If you’re a web accounting service, write your own accounting package, but don’t try to create your own magazine ads. If you have customers, never outsource customer service.

```

This all rings true in my experience. You should write the software that's critical to your core business competency yourself, because the maintenance cost is worth paying if you can achieve better software. But if it's not a core competency and your business isn't directly going to benefit from having best in class vs good enough, then it may be worth outsourcing.

I agree completely. Dependencies solve problems but not for free - bugs, security issues, versioning headaches, performance problems, compatibility gotchas, churn, &c. I live by the following:

(1) If a problem can be exhaustively specified in a formally well-defined way (mathematical logic), it will be wise to adopt a mature implementation - if it exists.

(2) If a problem can't be so specified, all implementations will be incomplete and will contain trade-offs. I have to address these problems myself to ensure that limits and trade-offs suit as well as possible what the business needs. If I can.

So, (1) says I shouldn't parse my own JSON. (2) says I should avoid the vast majority of what shows up in other people's dependency trees.

Yeah I think the OP article is great but doesn't pay enough respect to the costs of dependencies.

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