🔗 Not every Dependency is worth it.

Elixir has been quietly building out a truly impressive list of packages, and while a deep resource of packages that solve common or complex problems is good, for some people it’s not enough and want more. Which is to be expected, the Elixir community is not the same size as Python or JavaScript, we don’t have client libraries for every single service or startup or library. While a deep set of client libraries is handy for quick iterations, it can gradually turn into a liability. With a little thinking and time at the keyboard we can often come to a solution that fits our problem neatly with something we can fully understand.

As Gary Bernhardt recently posted on twitter

Over the last ~5 years or so I’ve worked hard to:

- Remind myself that “this problem isn’t my fault, but it’s my responsibility” when appropriate.
- When a problem is my responsibility, aggressively make it impossible for the problem to recur.

Great combo; recommended.

— Gary Bernhardt (@garybernhardt) January 20, 2024

it is always a good reminder, that our dependencies are our problem.

In this post today, we’ll walk through how I evaluate dependencies and then discuss how I go about replacing them in my own projects.“