> Even dependencies that aren't "essential" are super helpful in saving time.

They might save time up front, but over the lifetime of a long-lived project, my experience is dependencies end up costing more time. Dependencies are a quintessential but often overlooked form of tech debt.

If you only work on short-lived projects or build-it-and-move-on type contract work where speed matters more than quality, sure, go nuts with dependencies. But if you care about the long term maintainability of a project, actively reducing dependencies as close to zero as possible is one of the best things you can do.