Justin Williams writes about third-party dependencies:

As I’ve matured as a professional developer, I’ve learned to understand that a dependency and liability are many times interchangeable

He jokingly mentions how his stance will get him an invitation to the “old guy coders club,” of which I must be a long-time member (here’s proof). As current and former co-workers can attest, I’m notoriously cranky when it comes to third-party dependencies.

I wasn’t always this way, though. In my ill-spent youth I’d add third-party libraries to my projects without concern. It was a no-brainer at the time – they added so much power and snazziness with so little effort on my part.

It wasn’t until I created long-lived software like FeedDemon that I realized their downside. Components I relied upon would stop being upgraded, no longer be reliable, or simply disappear. They’d break when a new version of my…