[skydhash]

> sometimes you're faced with choosing between high-quality libraries to adopt and it's not particularly clear whether you picked the wrong one until after you've tried integrating them.

Maybe I'm lucky, but I've never encountered this situation. It has been mostly about what tradeoffs I'm willing to make. Libraries are more line of codes added to the project, thus they are liabilities. Including one is always a bad decision, so I only do so because the alternative is worse. Having to choose between two is more like between Scylla and Charybdis (known tradeoffs) than deciding to go left or right in a maze (mystery outcome).

[fluidcruft]

It probably depends on what you're working on. For the most part relying on a high-quality library/module that already implements a solution is less code to maintain. Any problems with the shared code can be fixed upstream with more eyeballs and more coverage than anything I build locally. I prefer to keep my eyeballs on things most related to my domain and not maintain stuff that's both ultimately not terribly important and replaceable (if push comes to shove).

Generally, you are correct that having multiple libraries to choose among is concerning, but it really depends. Mostly it's stylistic choices and it can be hard to tell how it integrates before trying.