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The way software is pasted together these days

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  • C Chris Copeland

    People complain about dependency hell, but they forget the alternative being that you would have to write everything yourself from scratch. I'm sure for some people this is fine ("HTTP server? I'll do it myself!") but for a large majority of people this isn't going to cut it. I use Java and Maven to manage my dependencies. If I choose to upgrade my dependencies because it's overdue, does it cause me headaches? Absolutely! I might have to spend an hour or two carefully adjusting versions until everyone is happy. But the trade-off is that I haven't had to build entire frameworks from scratch, and would I even want to do that if I could? Absolutely not.

    [ MQ | Tor.NET | Mimick ]

    H Offline
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    honey the codewitch
    wrote on last edited by
    #5

    I mean, hey, people obviously weren't having enough trouble managing local dependencies, so now we've flung them across the Internet. So when your guy making a Widget control goes through a messy divorce, maybe one of the things he does is pull his project. Then what? Like I said, dependency hell didn't used to be a distributed problem.

    Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix

    C 1 Reply Last reply
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    • H honey the codewitch

      Glued together from a web of dependencies, development "organized" via agile methodology. How long before we just fire software packages out of a t-shirt cannon? "Hold my beer, I've got a version update to deploy" I am really uncomfortable with the state of software development these days. Dependency hell didn't used to be a distributed problem. I suppose I'm just getting old and this is the new normal. Eventually we'll *need* AI just to keep our import hierarchies straight. :~

      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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      Ron Anders
      wrote on last edited by
      #6

      Eee-yah. :thumbsup:

      1 Reply Last reply
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      • H honey the codewitch

        I mean, hey, people obviously weren't having enough trouble managing local dependencies, so now we've flung them across the Internet. So when your guy making a Widget control goes through a messy divorce, maybe one of the things he does is pull his project. Then what? Like I said, dependency hell didn't used to be a distributed problem.

        Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix

        C Offline
        C Offline
        Chris Copeland
        wrote on last edited by
        #7

        What are the options then? You either: * Build your own libraries from scratch and maintain them yourself, potentially taking weeks or months of work * Manage your own dependencies with version control by manually downloading whatever you need and having them copied into your projects * Use dependency managers like NuGet, Maven, Gradle, npm etc You make it sounds like there is no winning solution. I'd much rather make use of a dependency repository and know I can almost click + collect a solution to whatever problem I have, than spend a long time Googling for an answer and then trial and error'ing until I find a working version. And the issue of people pulling libraries is a non-starter if you're using an appropriate dependency proxy. In Java we have Nexus, which acts as an intermediary which downloads and caches dependencies, so even if they're pulled from the internet (or someone maliciously overrides an existing version) we have constant access to what we need. I'd be more than happy to hear alternatives to dependency/package managers!

        [ MQ | Tor.NET | Mimick ]

        H 1 Reply Last reply
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        • H honey the codewitch

          Glued together from a web of dependencies, development "organized" via agile methodology. How long before we just fire software packages out of a t-shirt cannon? "Hold my beer, I've got a version update to deploy" I am really uncomfortable with the state of software development these days. Dependency hell didn't used to be a distributed problem. I suppose I'm just getting old and this is the new normal. Eventually we'll *need* AI just to keep our import hierarchies straight. :~

          Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix

          D Offline
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          dandy72
          wrote on last edited by
          #8

          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 "X|"

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          • H honey the codewitch

            Glued together from a web of dependencies, development "organized" via agile methodology. How long before we just fire software packages out of a t-shirt cannon? "Hold my beer, I've got a version update to deploy" I am really uncomfortable with the state of software development these days. Dependency hell didn't used to be a distributed problem. I suppose I'm just getting old and this is the new normal. Eventually we'll *need* AI just to keep our import hierarchies straight. :~

            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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            PIEBALDconsult
            wrote on last edited by
            #9

            You know my stance. I roll my own. :-D 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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            • D dandy72

              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 "X|"

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              PIEBALDconsult
              wrote on last edited by
              #10

              How do you know it's correct? How well does it react to corrupt data? :-D 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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              • C Chris Copeland

                What are the options then? You either: * Build your own libraries from scratch and maintain them yourself, potentially taking weeks or months of work * Manage your own dependencies with version control by manually downloading whatever you need and having them copied into your projects * Use dependency managers like NuGet, Maven, Gradle, npm etc You make it sounds like there is no winning solution. I'd much rather make use of a dependency repository and know I can almost click + collect a solution to whatever problem I have, than spend a long time Googling for an answer and then trial and error'ing until I find a working version. And the issue of people pulling libraries is a non-starter if you're using an appropriate dependency proxy. In Java we have Nexus, which acts as an intermediary which downloads and caches dependencies, so even if they're pulled from the internet (or someone maliciously overrides an existing version) we have constant access to what we need. I'd be more than happy to hear alternatives to dependency/package managers!

                [ MQ | Tor.NET | Mimick ]

                H Offline
                H Offline
                honey the codewitch
                wrote on last edited by
                #11

                How about not using dependencies for simple code? Not using dependencies just because you can. That's a start.

                Chris Copeland wrote:

                And the issue of people pulling libraries is a non-starter if you're using an appropriate dependency proxy. In Java we have Nexus, which acts as an intermediary which downloads and caches dependencies,

                This is actually hilarious to me. It reads like "It's not an issue. You see, it became such an issue that Oracle caches dependencies to prevent it"

                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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                • P PIEBALDconsult

                  How do you know it's correct? How well does it react to corrupt data? :-D 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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                  dandy72
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #12

                  PIEBALDconsult wrote:

                  How do you know it's correct? How well does it react to corrupt data? :-D

                  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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                  • D dandy72

                    PIEBALDconsult wrote:

                    How do you know it's correct? How well does it react to corrupt data? :-D

                    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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                    PIEBALDconsult
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #13

                    dandy72 wrote:

                    a library Microsoft wrote

                    I'd put money on it then.

                    dandy72 wrote:

                    not going to name names

                    :sigh: I would have welcomed the exercise.

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                    • H honey the codewitch

                      Glued together from a web of dependencies, development "organized" via agile methodology. How long before we just fire software packages out of a t-shirt cannon? "Hold my beer, I've got a version update to deploy" I am really uncomfortable with the state of software development these days. Dependency hell didn't used to be a distributed problem. I suppose I'm just getting old and this is the new normal. Eventually we'll *need* AI just to keep our import hierarchies straight. :~

                      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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                      jschell
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #14

                      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.

                      H 1 Reply Last reply
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                      • D dandy72

                        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 "X|"

                        J Offline
                        J Offline
                        jschell
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #15

                        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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                        • J jschell

                          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.

                          H Offline
                          H Offline
                          honey the codewitch
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #16

                          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

                          1 Reply Last reply
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                          • J jschell

                            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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                            dandy72
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #17

                            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...

                            1 Reply Last reply
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                            • H honey the codewitch

                              Glued together from a web of dependencies, development "organized" via agile methodology. How long before we just fire software packages out of a t-shirt cannon? "Hold my beer, I've got a version update to deploy" I am really uncomfortable with the state of software development these days. Dependency hell didn't used to be a distributed problem. I suppose I'm just getting old and this is the new normal. Eventually we'll *need* AI just to keep our import hierarchies straight. :~

                              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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                              P Offline
                              pmauriks
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #18

                              Nothing that AI can't fix. . . but I guess that scares me more. :-)

                              1 Reply Last reply
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                              • H honey the codewitch

                                How about not using dependencies for simple code? Not using dependencies just because you can. That's a start.

                                Chris Copeland wrote:

                                And the issue of people pulling libraries is a non-starter if you're using an appropriate dependency proxy. In Java we have Nexus, which acts as an intermediary which downloads and caches dependencies,

                                This is actually hilarious to me. It reads like "It's not an issue. You see, it became such an issue that Oracle caches dependencies to prevent it"

                                Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix

                                C Offline
                                C Offline
                                Chris Copeland
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #19

                                Of course you shouldn't be using dependencies for simple code, that should be a given. But I build a lot of microservice APIs, and each one has different requirements. Of course I'm going to use dependencies for those, including HTTP servers, security etc. You could argue "well if you're using HTTP servers so much, why not just make your own and re-use it for all your projects?" and you're right, I could have done. But why re-invent the wheel by building a brand new library to do exactly what someone else has done for me. The point I'm arguing is simply that before we had reliable dependency package managers, the industry was constantly rolling their own versions of things (even downloading other libraries and then making changes/amendments to meet their own requirements). If you hopped between jobs, you'd be learning an all new framework from the ground up, and each one had their own pros and cons. Nowadays, there's industry standards in adopted tools, so finding a new job is just matching up what skills you have. It sounds to me like your argument is focused on solo development, or for hobbyism. I've worked for several companies as a developer, ranging from small (2-3 team) to medium/large (30+ team, but department of 300+), and can tell you that in each role we used Maven and used a lot of dependencies. Why? Because we were building software that demanded tools that would have made no sense building from scratch when the solutions already existed out there. Try promoting "dependencies are baaaad" when you have to build an inbound rest API that provides credit card processing in real-time with transactional database queries, transaction ingress validation and an external API call to validate the card transaction claims, all while keeping processing speeds to a minimum. > This is actually hilarious to me. It reads like "It's not an issue. You see, it became such an issue that Oracle caches dependencies to prevent it" You're clearly commenting on something you know little about. Nexus is a product created by Apache for anyone (but mostly commercial) to use as a proxy-cache for dependencies, as well as a private distribution channel for internally built and deployed libraries and packages. The fact that is provides security in caching dependencies and preventing malicious overwrites is just a handy part of the tool, and I'd wager most companies working with Maven are using this tool or similar. You can find similar tools for any package manager.

                                [

                                H 1 Reply Last reply
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                                • C Chris Copeland

                                  Of course you shouldn't be using dependencies for simple code, that should be a given. But I build a lot of microservice APIs, and each one has different requirements. Of course I'm going to use dependencies for those, including HTTP servers, security etc. You could argue "well if you're using HTTP servers so much, why not just make your own and re-use it for all your projects?" and you're right, I could have done. But why re-invent the wheel by building a brand new library to do exactly what someone else has done for me. The point I'm arguing is simply that before we had reliable dependency package managers, the industry was constantly rolling their own versions of things (even downloading other libraries and then making changes/amendments to meet their own requirements). If you hopped between jobs, you'd be learning an all new framework from the ground up, and each one had their own pros and cons. Nowadays, there's industry standards in adopted tools, so finding a new job is just matching up what skills you have. It sounds to me like your argument is focused on solo development, or for hobbyism. I've worked for several companies as a developer, ranging from small (2-3 team) to medium/large (30+ team, but department of 300+), and can tell you that in each role we used Maven and used a lot of dependencies. Why? Because we were building software that demanded tools that would have made no sense building from scratch when the solutions already existed out there. Try promoting "dependencies are baaaad" when you have to build an inbound rest API that provides credit card processing in real-time with transactional database queries, transaction ingress validation and an external API call to validate the card transaction claims, all while keeping processing speeds to a minimum. > This is actually hilarious to me. It reads like "It's not an issue. You see, it became such an issue that Oracle caches dependencies to prevent it" You're clearly commenting on something you know little about. Nexus is a product created by Apache for anyone (but mostly commercial) to use as a proxy-cache for dependencies, as well as a private distribution channel for internally built and deployed libraries and packages. The fact that is provides security in caching dependencies and preventing malicious overwrites is just a handy part of the tool, and I'd wager most companies working with Maven are using this tool or similar. You can find similar tools for any package manager.

                                  [

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                                  honey the codewitch
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #20

                                  Chris Copeland wrote:

                                  Of course you shouldn't be using dependencies for simple code, that should be a given.

                                  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.

                                  Chris Copeland wrote:

                                  You could argue "well if you're using HTTP servers so much, why not just make your own and re-use it for all your projects?"

                                  Why would I? This isn't about NIH syndrome. If it was, I would have mentioned it.

                                  Chris Copeland wrote:

                                  The point I'm arguing is simply that before we had reliable dependency package managers, the industry was constantly rolling their own versions of things (even downloading other libraries and then making changes/amendments to meet their own requirements).

                                  Oh you're making a point about dependency package managers? Because I'm not. My point is about people.

                                  Chris Copeland wrote:

                                  You're clearly commenting on something you know little about.

                                  [Then goes on to explain that it's exactly what I said it was]

                                  Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix

                                  C 1 Reply Last reply
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                                  • H honey the codewitch

                                    Chris Copeland wrote:

                                    Of course you shouldn't be using dependencies for simple code, that should be a given.

                                    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.

                                    Chris Copeland wrote:

                                    You could argue "well if you're using HTTP servers so much, why not just make your own and re-use it for all your projects?"

                                    Why would I? This isn't about NIH syndrome. If it was, I would have mentioned it.

                                    Chris Copeland wrote:

                                    The point I'm arguing is simply that before we had reliable dependency package managers, the industry was constantly rolling their own versions of things (even downloading other libraries and then making changes/amendments to meet their own requirements).

                                    Oh you're making a point about dependency package managers? Because I'm not. My point is about people.

                                    Chris Copeland wrote:

                                    You're clearly commenting on something you know little about.

                                    [Then goes on to explain that it's exactly what I said it was]

                                    Check out my IoT graphics library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx And my IoT UI/User Experience library here: https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix

                                    C Offline
                                    C Offline
                                    Chris Copeland
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #21

                                    > 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 channel

                                    H 1 Reply Last reply
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                                    • C Chris Copeland

                                      > 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 channel

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                                      honey the codewitch
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #22

                                      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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                                      • C Chris Copeland

                                        People complain about dependency hell, but they forget the alternative being that you would have to write everything yourself from scratch. I'm sure for some people this is fine ("HTTP server? I'll do it myself!") but for a large majority of people this isn't going to cut it. I use Java and Maven to manage my dependencies. If I choose to upgrade my dependencies because it's overdue, does it cause me headaches? Absolutely! I might have to spend an hour or two carefully adjusting versions until everyone is happy. But the trade-off is that I haven't had to build entire frameworks from scratch, and would I even want to do that if I could? Absolutely not.

                                        [ MQ | Tor.NET | Mimick ]

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                                        Clive Hudson
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #23

                                        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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                                        • H honey the codewitch

                                          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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                                          Chris Copeland
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #24

                                          > 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

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