[jppope]

I think the article is a false dichotomy but to answer your question: Most 3rd party dependencies can be accomplished easily if you know how to program (things like crypography or well defined algorithms aside). Frameworks and libraries are more like tooling, though they usually have an incentive to lock you into their view of the world.

If you are a good programmer/ independent thinker you will tend to just write software from first principles with limited tooling. Its leaner and faster to build that way. Its usually more effective software. 3rd party libraries though easy to implement bring their own interfaces/paradigms. They require maintenance/security updates. They are often written by individuals who care little about performance.

There are TONS of exceptions to what I am saying above and tons of great packages that I use frequently, but if the default is to try and solve a problem by installing a package now you have 2 problems.

[tartoran]

Absolutely but the decision does require some form of experience. For example you'd not want to home cook my own logger and instead rely on a battle tested one. However, if you want to trim/pad strings you could avoid a third party dependency easily.