this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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Programming
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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
I disagree (mostly). What's the difference between library and language built-in? PHP and C++ has a ton of built-ins. It doesn't make it less complex than using library.
Problems that look simple at the first glance are in most cases are complex with too many edge cases.
I think I have never written a single utility function that had no non-obvious bug, and imagine that in more complex problems
Not to mention in many cases any function you write is possibly dangerous.
Just take a look how many things you have to consider when checking for odd number in JS:
https://www.npmjs.com/package/is-odd?activeTab=code
And of course most of that can be fixed be using strongly typed language.
The difference is I trust the language. That's one source I have to trust. With libraries I have to trust a ton of sources.
What I do is look around at existing utility functions and then adapt them to my needs. The difference is I know exactly what I'm adding, and I know it doesn't have dependencies, and when changes are made, I know what they are because I made them.
I've learned to be very judicious about using libraries only if they're well established (unless I'm working on a personal project and don't mind taking a chance with a smaller library). I do think one should think very carefully before adding a dependency, especially in webdev where you have a million bloated frameworks that have a handful of things you actually need. That being said, a trusted dependency is better than trying to reinvent (and maintain) the wheel.