Keep third-party dependencies at a minimum.
This is a general principle that we’ve followed from inception, but unlike No SDKs, it is more of a preference than a hard rule.
As much as possible, we seek to minimize the number of dependencies that we use. This may occasionally cause us to avoid adding features, but more often it drives decisions to rewrite code to remove redundant dependencies.
This also drives us to preferer high-quality dependencies, where we consider maturity, completeness, clarity, and breadth and depth of support as quality factors.
Pros#
- This avoids bloat.
- This reduces vulnerabilities.
- This reduces complexity by only having “one way” to do essential things.
Cons#
- This can require additional work to refactor code to use preferred dependencies.
- Limits of existing dependencies can make it harder to add new capabilities.