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If it's a given then why do so many people do it, in so many projects? It seems the norm rather than the exception.
I'm guessing for convenience? If a library exists out there that accomplishes exactly one of the things that you need your solution to do, why would you not use it? If I wanted to build a quick tool that processed some CSV file and dumped the data in a database, I'd probably leverage the two dependencies I am familiar with which will expedite this process, cutting my development time down from hours to, likely, less than an hour. And you're probably thinking "well this is my point, people just jump straight to using dependencies and that's why we're in this mess", and absolutely, you're right. But again, people also don't want to be re-inventing the wheel and wasting hours or days building a new library that does exactly what another library does.
Why would I? This isn't about NIH syndrome. If it was, I would have mentioned it.
Then what is your argument here? I get you're saying that reliance on dependencies can make projects messy, and that maybe we're overly dependent on them, but what's the alternative? Does everyone go back to writing their own libraries and storing them in version control? It's like an anarchist saying "the government is terrible and we should abolish them!" Okay, if I agree that the government is terrible, what is the alternative?
Oh you're making a point about dependency package managers? Because I'm not. My point is about people.
Well package managers are where people get their dependencies, unless they're downloading the sources and building them themselves. People have unified repositories for downloading the libraries they need, rather than ye olde days when you'd manually download DLLs, or checkout code and build from source, and store in version control. People choose to use these package managers because they can Google "c# asp.net validation nuget" and be presented with packages which provide validators for ASP.NET modal objects.
[Then goes on to explain that it's exactly what I said it was]
Except it isn't exactly what you said. Oracle never developed anything, it's an Apache tool which is used by businesses and freelancers for storing and caching dependencies on a node within an infrastructure to reduce network-load in both build pipelines and on internal networks. The fact that it provides additional security by preventing malicious version overwrites, and retains dependency versions even when removed from the source distribution channels, is an added bonus. Is it an added layer of complexity? Sure, but it beats the hell out of keeping your dependencies in version control, or sitting in a folder somewhere on your PC for when you want to use it.
I'll throw you a bone. Do I agree that dependencies are an absolute mess? Of course I do, my projects have hundreds of dependencies because the base packages I use also have dependencies, which have dependencies. The fact of the matter is though, everything I use is industry standard in my field, if I look up job descriptions for my role almost all of the listings expect experience in the libraries I'm using. And I'm not managing all of these hundreds of dependencies, I manage about 25, the tools I use take care of the rest. If I don't use these libraries, I have to build an insurmountable of code to accomplish what I need.
And as I said before, if I choose to upgrade my libraries I do have to contend with conflicts. But I'd rather spend an hour carefully going through and getting my versions right, than spend months building my own frameworks and libraries to accomplish what already exists.
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Chris Copeland wrote: why would you not use it?
Because there's a cost associated in terms of relying on other people's code. You have things like trust, control over the direction of it, bugfixes on your schedule rather than theirs, and a myriad of other reasons.
Using a dependency is a *decision process* and I'm glad you asked this question because it basically answers a question you asked further down, to wit - "what are you arguing?" so I'll address that here.
Chris Copeland wrote: why would you not use it?
If you have to ask that question, then it sounds a whole lot like you don't acknowledge that there is effort, work and compromise in managing external resources, not just internal resources. There are plenty of reasons not to use dependencies depending on what it is, and the situation.
And this attitude of ignoring that is exactly the problem. Dependency hell is real. Now it's a distributed problem which makes it worse.
Chris Copeland wrote: Well package managers are where people get their dependencies, unless they're downloading the sources and building them themselves.
It doesn't matter how people get them. What matters is how and when they use them. See above.
Chris Copeland wrote: . Oracle never developed anything, it's an Apache tool which is used by businesses
Oh Apache, not Oracle. My mistake. Guess that renders my entire argument invalid then.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Because there's a cost associated in terms of relying on other people's code.
Sure there is, but there's also a significant (and real world) cost to relying on building your own code-base and tools to accomplish these things. I joined my current company last year and was tasked with building them a sales CRM system from scratch. No existing IT department, no existing software, no infrastructure. Once we'd solidified the base requirements and it came time to getting started, I chose the frameworks I was going to use, got them setup and within 4 hours had a running HTTP server with full OAuth security and barebones frontend.
Now if I had come into the business and said "okay well it'll be best if we roll our own HTTP server, our own frontend framework, etc. etc." it would have been months before I could even get started on the application itself, and the business would be down many months of my salary with nothing to show for it. And, could I even reliably build an entire framework which has all of the security and features of the library I was using? Probably, but to fully replicate what I needed would have taken much more than months.
Of course I recognise that there's time, effort, money and compromise involved in using dependencies, but that's what companies and development teams do. They weigh options and discuss the pros and cons before they choose what to use. As a tech lead in a previous role I was constantly being asked which libraries we should use for what, that's just part of the role.
It doesn't matter how people get them. What matters is how and when they use them. See above.
Does it matter so much? If ol' Joe Bloggs is working on a personal project and he decides he wants to use an existing library to cut down his development from days into hours, I find it hard to understand what's so terrible about that.
If a company's development team collectively agree to build their new greenfield project using X library with Y and Z dependencies so that they can have it completed within 6 weeks rather than 6 months, is that so horrible?
I mean, ultimately, you can choose not to use any dependencies at all, and completely build your own libraries and keep everything internal. Absolutely nothing is stopping you, and I do see you build your own libraries and share them on CP, which is fantastic! I myself have built a few libraries too and shared them, just for kicks.
But the reality is, the development ecosystem has moved on from just building their own tools and managing the code themselves. I like to think of it as being in a stage where all those incredibly complex problems we used to commonly face now have pre-built solutions, allowing us to get on with actual development, rather than breaking our backs trying to put the base pieces together. If my colleague can ask me to quickly throw him together a landing page for some marketing leads, and I can do that within an hour or two because I have all the tools readily available for me, then I count that as a win. If that project ends up with 100+ dependencies, I'm not managing each of those dependencies, I'm handling maybe 5 or 6. My development tools handle all of the rest.
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Chris Copeland wrote: Sure there is, but there's also a significant (and real world) cost to relying on building your own code-base and tools to accomplish these things.
I never argued there wasn't. In fact the only reason I didn't bring it up is because it's a painfully obvious point that I felt didn't need to be reiterated. Also, water is wet.
Chris Copeland wrote: Of course I recognise that there's time, effort, money and compromise involved in using dependencies, but that's what companies and development teams do. They weigh options and discuss the pros and cons before they choose what to use.
I wish that was true. God, how I wish that was true. If it was true in general, NPM's repository footprint would probably be about 1/3 of what it is. As often as not, the situation is a developer is tasked with adding some functionality to a web application, and they just decide what they're go going to import unilaterally, and how much of that is thought about beforehand depends on the developer alone, often with predictable results.
Chris Copeland wrote: Does it matter so much?
Yes.
If you don't think about what you are writing, you are not writing software, you are free association babbling.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
modified 19hrs ago.
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I never argued there wasn't. In fact the only reason I didn't bring it up is because it's a painfully obvious point that I felt didn't need to be reiterated. Also, water is wet.
If you're going to discuss the costs and implications of using dependency libraries, you do also need to discuss the opposing side of costs and implications of building your own. Just because it's obvious doesn't make it any less a credible argument, companies are not going to be okay with their development teams spending weeks or months building software packages which already exist out of the box.
Just because "there's a risk" when using a third-party library doesn't offset the enormous costs involved with rolling your own. Heck, even if you did roll your own version, there's a strong chance you'd be introducing your own bugs and security issues. Libraries and frameworks which do provide infrastructure (ie. for web, Django, Spring, ASP.NET, Laravel) get regularly tested and probed for CVEs, which isn't something you'd have for a home-grown library.
I wish that was true. God, how I wish that was true.
Every company I've worked with has done this, and companies my friends work for do this. In all the open-source projects I've used, they have code review processes in place which analyse whether changing dependency versions might cause problems. Unit and integration tests are there to test these sorts of things too. I'm not saying everyone does this, it's down to the individual teams and people. It sounds more like you've had personal experience with a couple of bad actors, and are projecting this onto the wider development community.
Just because people are publishing packages out doesn't mean you have to use them. There are a lot of silly solutions to non-existent problems, and a lot of libraries which duplicate things already. But this just leans into the original problem: why are people re-inventing the wheel when there are libraries out there that do the job anyway? It's because some people have this mindset of "I know that library does what I want, but I think I can do it better/I don't like how they did it so I'll make my own", or they feel like they have something to prove and need to build it from scratch.
If you don't think about what you are writing, you are not writing software, you are free association babbling.
And there-in lies what I believe is the underyling tone of this thread. This comes off as saying "If you don't write the software yourself then you're not a real software developer". This isn't even remotely true. In fact, a good developer knows how to best leverage the existing tools available to accomplish what they need. There's absolutely nothing wrong with leaning on existing frameworks and libraries to build what you need to build.
In my previous job I wrote a piece of software designed to issue invoices out to customers, and it processed hundreds of thousands of invoices every day. This included uploading them to cloud storage, updating the customer portal with the invoice details, issuing out emails to the customers, updating internal systems with audit information. I built all of this using existing frameworks (Spring Boot, AWS SDK, Apache Camel, etc.) and it was an incredibly powerful and complex piece of software, but does this mean I did nothing more than free association babble? Am I any less of a software developer because I didn't take the time to build my own cloud infrastructure and asynchronous message processing engines? Drat, I didn't write my own distributed bucket-lock-based SQS, I relied on AWS to provide that for me.
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Nope. It's not that at all.
It's just using dependencies or not should be a thoughtful choice.
For too many people it's not.
I get that you think that's not the case.
What I've seen says your thinking is not in line with the actual applications that are out there. Particularly on the web.
I don't care if you agree. You wanted your argument and you got one.
Meanwhile I said what I came to say.
Pretty much everyone on this thread got it save you.
I'm done.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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honey the codewitch wrote: then it sounds a whole lot like you don't acknowledge that there is effort, work and compromise in managing external resources, not just internal resources. There are plenty of reasons not to use dependencies depending on what it is, and the situation.
I like anti-lock brakes and all wheel drive on my car.
And I absolutely adore the back up camera.
Yes, they are more complex. And definitely more expensive. I can't imagine what it would cost to fix that camera if someone runs into the back up my car but I know it would take very little to destroy it.
But no way am I going to roll my own.
And no way I am I going to look for a Model-T just because it was far simpler.
For that matter I like the lighter I bought just to start my outdoor BBQ. No way I am going to start rubbing two sticks together.
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This isn't about that.
It's about not putting truck nuts on your sedan just because you saw them on amazon.
The choice to use a dependency or not should be a thoughtful one. Not *google google google* "PAY DIRT!" *click!*
It isn't complicated.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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This statement proves my view that most people who call themselves 'developers', 'programmers', 'coders', whatever, shouldn't be developers. They should stop immediately and go become accountants or estate agents.
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Eee-yah. 
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Earlier this week I needed something to quickly decode a string - I don't know how this string I'm handed has been encoded, but I know it's part of some well-supported standard. Anyway, I did find a NuGet package that had the function to break it apart, but it had its own set of dependencies - it brought along 8 new packages (!)...some of which I was already using, but still - had it not been for time, I would've been very, very tempted to roll my own. I held my breath in disgust and they're now part of my solution file...but every time I look at it, I can't help but go " "
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How do you know it's correct? How well does it react to corrupt data? 
I would learn the "well-supported standard" well enough to at least make a rough version of the encoder and decoder, and then compare inputs and outputs between the two. Once you have that in place, if they agree and unless it's seriously slower than the reference implementation, just use yours.
I'd be interested in knowing more about this "well-supported standard" -- last year I had to implement a JSON parser which could detect and react to certain imperfections in some files we were receiving from a third-party utility.
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: How do you know it's correct? How well does it react to corrupt data? 
I don't. And I don't have the resources to investigate.
All I know is that it's a library Microsoft wrote, so I have to trust it (as far as I can trust Microsoft). I'm still not going to name names to protect the innocent.
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dandy72 wrote: a library Microsoft wrote
I'd put money on it then.
dandy72 wrote: not going to name names
 I would have welcomed the exercise.
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dandy72 wrote: Earlier this week I needed something to quickly decode a string
For something similar to which I knew how to write the code, the very best solution I found pulled in hundreds of dependencies. It was part of a much larger application. No way I was comfortable with that so I just rolled my own code.
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Totally agreed. I'll have a look at the actual implementation and, if I'm allowed the time, just might roll my own as well...
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You know my stance. I roll my own.
I haven't yet run into a situation where I wasn't able to write what I need just with what's in .net itself -- or things like Oracle's own .net provider.
Third-party solutions don't appeal to me. Not to forget that any third-party packages had to be approved by corporate and that could take months.
I will say that I have dabbled with EPPlus and AngleSharp (both fine products), just to see what they offered, but never used them for anything that went into production. I don't recall either having other dependencies.
Personally, I see dependencies as red flags.
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honey the codewitch wrote: with the state of software development these days.
These days? Versus when?
Like when they first attempted to re-write the airline reservation system and managed to end up with a failed project and something like 10+ million (or billion) dollar lawsuits?
Or when they released a CPU that had a bug in the floating point library.
Or the space craft that had to be destroyed after taking off.
Humans are fallible. That is true now and always has been. Complexity in no way helps with that.
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Versus when software did not have 150 dependencies for an online guest book
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Nothing that AI can't fix. . . but I guess that scares me more.
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I am going to retire next year and it won't be soon enough, partly because of what you are talking about. After 50 years of working on computer systems, I think I will progress to home craft activity.
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I use as few dependencies in my project as possible.
In my current, rather large project, the only actual dependency I am using is for Syncfusion's WPF control suite.
I have an additional Open Source project, which I ported to VB.NET so all of my source is consistent (it is an Open Source project) and the Firebird Database Provider, which I also include the source code for. This latter project is in C# and is the only one I decided not to port since most people would not be looking at it anyway. However, it is compiled with the rest of the project so that if I want to upgrade my framework version, there are no issues.
When I upgrade the database engine to the latest version, I will probably just use the DLL for the data provider.
All this being said, I attempt to minimize project dependencies as much as possible since they can and do cause issues when updating and\or upgrading one's project.
As one who came out of the mainframe environments we all learned one thing about our coding and project infrastructures... Keep it as simple as possible so the least experienced member of a team can quickly come up
to speed with the project.
Today, however, many developers seem to regale as to how complex they can make their code and project infrastructures by using much of then newer and arcane coding constructs, which really do very little for performance in most cases while making the source code more ambiguously complex. At the same time, projects are no longer offered as separate versions on a per framework basis but are all combined into one solution with a lot of directives to produce all of the necessary assemblies on a per framework separation. All this makes a project difficult to read and understand...
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software, Inc.
blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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I haven't quite figured out what language it thinks I should be using, but all my English words are red-lined now. No idea how this happened, checked my language preferences and they are US-English, refreshed the browser page multiple times. Well, I guess for bugs, its fairly benign, not like it launched nuclear missiles, and I'm almost the point where my brain is ignoring all the red-lining. 
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Oh, I do say Ole Boy, There is only one right and proper English in this world and that is the Kings English. Ones spell checker should always respect and reflect that simple fact. It is such a trifling and awfully embarrassing proposition you make that it should represent anything from the uncivilised colonies.
A Fine is a Tax for doing something wrong
A Tax is a Fine for doing something good.
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RossMW wrote: Ole Boy
RossMW wrote: he Kings English
RossMW wrote: Ones spell checker
I guess they don't teach either spelling or grammar down your way. 
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