We use too many libraries. This may be an actual unpopular opinion though. I find that the more a library tries to do, and the more dependencies it has itself, the more hesitant I am to use it. It just feels like a tower of cards ready to fall at any moment.
I’m not a very trusting person and work alone though so this might just be an emotional decision. But it is nice having a project be composed of code that does just what is needed and nothing else. It makes it easier to fix bugs and especially to maintain the code.
I do use libraries, but only if they’re absolutely necessary or if they’re very focused and don’t try to do a million things. It’s not about size but complexity.
I also feel better when I use less libraries, even if that may seem irrational sometimes.
I think part of the library craze stems from people who really only want to use the programming language as a tool to get fast results (which is legitimate, of course).
For example in academic contexts you have a lot of scientists who use R with a whole truckload of libraries, often unnecessarily.
It reminds me of the plugin craze in the whole wordpress can of worms…
I’m not a very trusting person and work alone though so this might just be an emotional decision. But it is nice having a project be composed of code that does just what is needed and nothing else. It makes it easier to fix bugs and especially to maintain the code.
And that’s one of the reasons microservices are a thing.
This is also why having a strong standard library and/or framework is so important to a language. Otherwise you’ll end up needing a third-party library for every little thing, each coming with their own programming paradigms and dozens of dependencies.
We use too many libraries. This may be an actual unpopular opinion though. I find that the more a library tries to do, and the more dependencies it has itself, the more hesitant I am to use it. It just feels like a tower of cards ready to fall at any moment.
I’m not a very trusting person and work alone though so this might just be an emotional decision. But it is nice having a project be composed of code that does just what is needed and nothing else. It makes it easier to fix bugs and especially to maintain the code.
I do use libraries, but only if they’re absolutely necessary or if they’re very focused and don’t try to do a million things. It’s not about size but complexity.
I also feel better when I use less libraries, even if that may seem irrational sometimes.
I think part of the library craze stems from people who really only want to use the programming language as a tool to get fast results (which is legitimate, of course).
For example in academic contexts you have a lot of scientists who use R with a whole truckload of libraries, often unnecessarily. It reminds me of the plugin craze in the whole wordpress can of worms…
And that’s one of the reasons microservices are a thing.
This is also why having a strong standard library and/or framework is so important to a language. Otherwise you’ll end up needing a third-party library for every little thing, each coming with their own programming paradigms and dozens of dependencies.
NPM’s left-pad library has entered the chat