> It appreciates those who can haphazardly slap together a subpar something out of ready-made libraries to meet "business goals". And this is depressing af.
OTOH, those who can do this while still maintaining some integrity get a lot of respect, at least in communities like HN. I'm reminded of Spolsky's "smart and gets things done."
And just to push back a bit: reuse is a good thing. Indeed, by looking first to make sure you aren't re-implementing the wheel, much of the spurious software that this article bemoans can be avoided. I know it sounds like an imperfect compromise, but that's because it is. Sometimes you just need to get shit done.
Dependencies are great. It's how small teams do big stuff.
Dependencies are awful, it's where jurassic-scale disasters are born.
Whether we like it or not, dependencies are here to stay. It's like calculators are now an integral part of every student's book bag. I'm old enough to remember when you would get thrown out of school for bringing a calculator.
It's just that when we develop and publish infrastructure, it needs to be held to a much higher standard than the apps that are built on top of it, and I'm not sure we're at the point where we can implicitly trust infrastructure. Being good at vetting and choosing dependencies is still an extremely valuable skill.
OTOH, those who can do this while still maintaining some integrity get a lot of respect, at least in communities like HN. I'm reminded of Spolsky's "smart and gets things done."
And just to push back a bit: reuse is a good thing. Indeed, by looking first to make sure you aren't re-implementing the wheel, much of the spurious software that this article bemoans can be avoided. I know it sounds like an imperfect compromise, but that's because it is. Sometimes you just need to get shit done.