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How I evaluate dependencies

david duymelinck on January 05, 2026

I like to comment on new features, new libraries and new frameworks. That is why I want to give more context how I come to my conclusions. ...
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Sloan the DEV Moderator

We loved your post so we shared it on social.

Keep up the great work!

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Ivan Mykhavko

Thoughtful take 👍
At first, those packages may seem like they speed up development, but once you realize they’re not a perfect fit, you end up struggling with configuration instead of implementing something simple.
But sure sometime you can find something valuable, for example: npmjs.com/package/is-odd

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david duymelinck

Thank you.

I agree is-odd should be in every library 😊

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Lars Moelleken

Every cash cow project (legacy makes the money) that I was paid to modernise was created with only a few dependencies; most of the core logic was independent of dependencies, perhaps because there was nothing of good quality available to use at the time, or perhaps that is precisely why it worked for so long (10-20 years). Who knows. 😏

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david duymelinck

I don't think code quality is a problem. A dependency can be more qualified, because the people that work on it know the problemspace better.
I think the biggest problem is maintaining the few features of the dependency that are not compatible with the project.

Most of the times when the core logic is solid, only a big language change could trigger a code rewrite.

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Sylwia Laskowska

I’ll admit that at first I thought: “oh come on, we need dependencies!” Then I remembered that one project where they really made sure to keep them to an absolute minimum — they didn’t even let me add Lodash… Yeah, it was a super stable project 😊

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david duymelinck

I think we all have our goto libraries, but it is good to challenge them once in a while to see how much value they have kept along the years.

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Pascal Reitermann

Dependencies can introduce breaking changes, forcing you to either adapt your codebase or migrate to an alternative. Both options are time-consuming, and let's be honest: who has that kind of time nowadays?