DIY vs. dependency

I recently pulled an apparently small item from the backlog. It was to add a guided tour, a showcase of the essential features of the app. Naturally, I search for an open-source library that would do the job, and Bob's your uncle.

There are a few alternatives to pick from. Yet, they seem just not quite fit the need here. All of them require excessive changes to the existing implementation instead of just plug and play.

In cases like these, how do I draw the line, when to use a library, when to DIY.

First of all, I have a high do it yourself threshold. I generally think that almost any reasonably used OS library is a better option than DIY. You probably are a worse developer in the domain of the library than the community behind it. You also have not yet run into all those corner cases and weird bugs that come biting you back. Even if the dependency may bring something you don't need, I see it as a worthwhile trade-off. I'll skip the frameworks vs. libraries debate here.

If the open-source library brings in "too much" (determined by a gut feeling I suppose) AND brings in tons of potentially outdated dependencies, look for another one. If no suitable is found, then start to think DIY.

In my guided tour feature, I brought in zero new deps, did minimal changes to the existing code, and wrote roughly the same amount of new code and tests than I would have if I would bring in some of the potential off-the-shelf solutions.

Comments

I'm not a passionate developer

A family friend of mine is an airlane pilot. A dream job for most, right? As a child, I certainly thought so. Now that I can have grown-up talks with him, I have discovered a more accurate description of his profession. He says that the truth about the job is that it is boring. To me, that is not that surprising. Airplanes are cool and all, but when you are in the middle of the Atlantic sitting next to the colleague you have been talking to past five years, how stimulating can that be? When he says the job is boring, it is not a bad kind of boring. It is a very specific boring. The "boring" you would want as a passenger. Uneventful. Yet, he loves his job. According to him, an experienced pilot is most pleased when each and every tiny thing in the flight plan - goes according to plan. Passengers in the cabin of an expert pilot sit in the comfort of not even noticing who is flying. As someone employed in a field where being boring is not exactly in high demand, this sounds pro...

RocksDB data recovery

I recently needed to do some maintenance on a RocksDB key-value store. The task was simple enough, just delete some keys as the db served as a cache and did not contain any permanent data. I used the RocksDB cli administration tool ldb to erase the keys. After running a key scan with it, I got this error Failed: Corruption: Snappy not supported or corrupted Snappy compressed block contents So a damaged database. Fortunately, there's a tool to fix it, and after running it, I had access to the db via the admin tool. All the data was lost though. Adding and removing keys worked fine but all the old keys were gone. It turned out that the corrupted data was all the data there was. The recovery tool made a backup folder, and I recovered the data by taking the files from the backup folder and manually changing the CURRENT file to point to the old MANIFEST file which is apparently how RocksDB knows which sst (table) files to use. I could not access the data with the admin tool, ...

"You are a friendly breadwinner"

A recent blog post by Pete Koomen about how we still lack truly "AI-native" software got me thinking about the kinds of applications I’d like to see. As the blog post says, AI should handle the boring stuff and leave the interesting parts for me. I listed down a few tasks I've dealt with recently and wrote some system prompts for potential agentic AIs: Check that the GDPR subprocessor list is up to date. Also, ensure we have a signed data processing agreement in place with the necessary vendors. Write a summary of what you did and highlight any oddities or potentially outdated vendors. Review our product’s public-facing API. Ensure the domain objects are named consistently. Here's a link to our documentation describing the domain. Conduct a SOC 2 audit of our system and write a report with your findings. Send the report to Slack. Once you get approval, start implementing the necessary changes. These could include HR-related updates, changes to cloud infras...

Koodihommia

Search This Blog