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Comment by gm | Hacker News Reader

No. Some reasons:

1) As everyone else has said, we are horrible at estimating.

2) We think we might only need 1% of an external dependency, until we do not. Case in point: By this criteria, no one needs a grid/datatable library.So we write it "in an afternoon". Then we're asked for an export to Excel. Later on we're asked for pagination with large data sets. And then an export to PDF. How many afternoons did that cost you?

3) Writing new code is an excellent opportunity to create new bugs and implement bad design because we're on hurry since it took nowhere near an afternoon of code to write and we cut corners.

Anyway, those are just three that come to mind immediately.

This is not an argument against the "afternoon rule", but is really an argument against making simple-sounding black and white rules to solve to problems that are inherently complex, and are thus, gray areas.

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> We think we might only need 1% of an external dependency

I've seen the opposite just as often. Someone things an external dependency can just plug in and solve the problem, then 16 hours later they've made the basic thing work with an external dependency with a bunch of internal code on top of it. Now you have a pile of fragile code which breaks when the dependency changes underneath you, you have a bunch of in-house code supporting a thing which might not be getting up-line support anymore, and you still have a bunch of internal code to maintain.

> Case in point: By this criteria, no one needs a grid/datatable library.So we write it "in an afternoon". Then we're asked for an export to Excel. Later on we're asked for pagination with large data sets. And then an export to PDF. How many afternoons did that cost you?

You can always migrate to a library at a later date if the scope changes. More-so, you don't know how the scope is going to change, how do you pick a dependency based on future scope changes?

That's exactly what my point is: This is way too complex to boil down to a simple rule of thumb to apply to all cases. There are arguments and counter arguments (and real-life examples and counter examples) ad-nauseum.

It's better to say: "Hey experienced people: How would you decide whether to introduce an external dependency or roll your own if the immediate requirement at hand seems small enough to write on your own in half a day?". Then we can get into a fun conversation that will boil down to "It depends."

Developers should try to build things before they reach out and grab a package. Usually it doesn't take too long to figure out if you are making a giant hairball. By trying to implement it yourself, you get a better understanding of the problem regardless.

1) please don't include me on that. Just say that YOU are bad at estimating. I estimated whole projects just fine, except management doesn't want to hear the truth or they are selling dreams to upper management. That's different.

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