[throwaway55554]

> Generally: minimize dependencies.

This. It doesn't mean go overboard with NIH, but you have to evaluate and select your dependencies judiciously. It's not about developer productivity with these types of products.

Also, make as much of your program configurable as possible so you can tweak things out in the field. For example, if you have a correlation timeout. Make that configurable. But don't go overboard with that either. :)

[lostcolony]

Another aspect of this is pick dependencies that are well encapsulated (so if you need to change them or update them it's generally easy to).

Of course, this is just a good choice regardless. Still, it shocks me how often people will choose libraries and frameworks that require very opinionated structure on large swathes of code, rather than having well defined minimal touchpoints.