Sometimes one must reinvent the wheel in order to move forward

Don't reinvent the wheel ?

In software development it seems prudent to try to avoid reinventing the wheel. I mean, why bother writing code that's already written and has been allegedly peer reviewed ?
It seems like common sense but there is a price to be paid for reusing somebody else's wheel.

• Longevity
• Sub dependencies
• Debug issues
• Bugs
• Support

Just pull in another library ?

I'm thinking especially npm (Node Package Manager), Laravel and Composer.
The rate of deprecation and non backwards compatibility is frightening. Applications that happily compiled 2 weeks ago are suddenly garbage because a sub dependency has been removed or is no longer supported.
This is worse than DLL Hell of the 1990s. DLL Hell was one of the great reasons for web based rather than desktop applications as it removed the conflicts and sub dependency issues on the client.
At least it was only browser differences...
 

Shiny new fashions

It seems fashionable in 2024 to just "pull in another library" but it's actually creating a massive support problem now and even more so further down the track.
I look at my decision to avoid 3rd party libraries as much as possible and I notice my applications are still alive and well and running FAST on new hardware and don't have the same horrible upgrade problems I see going on.
There's a lot of mileage to be had from running as lean as possible...