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by mschuster91 1273 days ago
I get the general idea, but at the same time, I don't have the time to write my own libraries from scratch - all modern web standards are complex and most libraries filled with years to decades worth of experience of all the edge cases that crop up, particularly as most standards don't carry a "compliance test suite".

It's one thing if I were paid by my employer to re-invent the wheel, but for personal projects... I don't have that much free time for them in the first place any more, I want to get shit done and not shave yaks all day. When I want a good grind, I'll pack out Factorio or one of the LEGO Switch games...

2 comments

There's a difference in values between those who reinvent the wheel and those who leverage opensource. It sounds like you value time-to-product whereas I value ownership of said product.

There are always risks associated with building on other people's land, platforms, and codebases. However, there are also risks when reinventing the wheel. Both perspectives have advantages, disadvantages, and use cases.

A compromise is to audit and then pin exact versions, or even copy and paste the code into your project. Yes, this is a clear tradeoff in that you'll lose access to newer updates, but it's certainly worth thinking about. I do it with relatively trivial libraries for things that I know the package has solved various edge cases, is small in scope, and probably won't be updated again, for example.
I agree with you, but I'd prefer to reinvent the wheel rather than audit an existing code base.