I've been using the phrase "Dung-beetle programming" for that dominant mode for some time.

I love that!

I am a "dependency skeptic." A lot of folks think I'm against them, but nothing could be further from the truth. Most of my software is composed of dependent modules.

Mostly written by me.

I don't oppose the whole concept of using libraries. I just look closely at each library I'm about to include in my project to understand what exactly it's doing, what it's abstracting away, what are the tradeoffs I'm making, and whether its scope is too broad for whatever I'm trying to achieve. It's sincerely perplexing to me that not everyone does this.

The other biggie is legal and fiduciary exposure. That's usually neglected by tecchies.

You can't ask a lawyer, because they will always say "no," but I have seen some really bad things happen, because people didn't take this stuff seriously.

I never take this stuff seriously, but then I never really worked, or ever had the desire to work, on anything this proprietary, or in a company this bureaucratic. When my first employer was acquired by a giant corporation and I started seeing it transform into this monstrosity, I quit.

The problem can be when something untoward happens with a dependency, or a buried dependency, like a security breach, or a licensing issue.

Lawyers will generally chew up the food chain, and applications that use dependencies can get caught in the blast radius.

That can happen with big shops, or small shops.

Anyway, I've never in my life consulted a lawyer about my or someone else's code. The whole idea feels weird.

I will bet you don’t live in the US.

Around here, lawyers are a dime a dozen.

I don't. I'm Russian.

> 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.

It's using dependencies without understanding them which is apparently the norm these days, and this really grinds my gears.