[hohenheim]

Very much on point. If the core of your business, or application, depends on external code, you are taking a huge risk integrating it into your code base.

Sometimes it is better to invent a wheel that does exactly what you need, and nothing more. Software is sometimes about NOT reusing code.

[flr03]

The re-inventing the wheel thing always starts with good intentions and works fine until you have to throw in hundreds of hours to maintain a beast that nobody likes but everybody has to use. You end up being locked in your own solution and instead of blaming your supplier you can blame yourself.

[thinkingkong]

This is not true in most cases. Most situations rely entirely on integrating 3rd party code, and the risk to the business is zero. Most tools and services dont last long enough to justify reinventing the wheel.

[Netcob]

Absolutely. Sometimes it feels like some projects want nothing more than stick their tentacles into your business layer. I don't have a lot of OCD but that sort of thing definitely triggers it.

Example: object-database mappers making you put database-specific things into your domain entities, or innocently implementing the unit of work pattern. It's right there, all you have to do is let us in!