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Comment by nuc1e0n | Hacker News Reader

npm is a good example of the "buy vs build" idea, although npm modules are mostly free of course. Why write code when you can just call someone else's? But then you get problems like the left-pad fiasco

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I always understood "Buy vs Build" as "buying software is cheaper than building it yourself". In the case of NPM, using most of the third-party modules out there (buying) is more expensive than writing the code yourself (building).

There's a balance to be had for sure. If you bring in some module to a project it comes with costs of its own. That's not often well understood

> using most of the third-party modules out there (buying) is more expensive than writing the code yourself (building).

This is probably true for "most of the modules" but not for "most of the modules that people actually use"

Yes.

I came from PHP, where everyone and their mom would reinvent the wheel.

Then I switched to Node.js, where no one would write their own code anymore.

The truth lies in the middle.

Can I write something like D3 until the dead line hits? Probably not.

Can I write something like left-pad until the dead line hits? Certainly.

Habits often mute common sense.

True. Though realistically, regarding left-pad, in other languages I would expect left-pad to be part of string formatting package.

Also there is probably a decent amount of “wont get fired for choosing X” where X is React, date-fns, jasmine etc. But those things have dependencies with dependencies and so on.

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