[BigJono]

I'm not nitpicking, I just picked out the first part of your post because it's the only bit I disagree with.

I'm saying it's dangerous to have this line of thought that the "correct" way to build a system is with a mish mash of third party libraries and that doing any non-glue coding yourself is only for fun. You're insinuating that the decision OP is making is between efficiency and fun, whereas in reality it's an optimisation problem for efficiency that a lot of people mess up because they don't understand one side of the equation. (and if OP wants to have fun and roll his own that's great but it's another case entirely, I'm assuming he's not asking HN for permission to do that).

I use NPM as an example because for JS devs in the places I visit it's becoming a cultural thing, which IME is not the case in other communities. I don't see as many python devs entertain the thought of maintaining something for years with "crappy libraries" in it for the sake of saving "days" of work. But in JS land that attitude is all over the place and the phrasing of the first bit of your post reminded me of it, so...