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by ocdtrekkie 3783 days ago
So, I've been writing a home automation system using the .NET Framework (with Visual Basic, I'll wait until you finish laughing).......... Okay.

I've made a point not to add any third parties references and packages I can avoid. I went ahead and got a third party scheduling engine, and the SQLite provider, but beyond that, I'm writing everything else myself so far.

First of all, I'm learning a lot in having to write stuff myself. At the very least, it's a great educational experience. I've worked with a lot of code samples, so I'm not going totally from scratch, but they're all at the very least tailored to my needs.

But for me, the big thing is keeping everything thin. The program loads in milliseconds. Almost all of the reference data for what it's built on is in one place (the .NET Framework Reference). And key, is that the features my program supports are the features I want and need, not the features some dependency has told me to have.

The biggest dependency I have, Quartz.NET, is actually the most confusing part. It's not structured like the rest of my program is, it's documentation leaves some things to be desired, and it does a lot more than I need it to. There's a lot of bloat I could cut out if I wrote my own scheduler, and maybe someday I will.