Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

> We don't craft programs out of machine code any more. We use high-level languages.

A.k.a. we chop down existing trees instead of growing our own.

> This is going to end badly.

While I don't disagree, the alternative is more often than not for nothing to ever get shipped because the development team is busy reinventing the universe, especially when a "don't use libraries" mentality gets taken to its logical conclusions ("we need perfect custom hardware to run our perfect custom operating system written to run our perfect custom programming language/runtime to run our perfect application" - just because Google has those sorts of resources doesn't mean a lone developer trying to get a side project done has those sorts of resources).

There is, however, a reasonable middle ground: start with those dependencies, and then as you encounter their limitations start working to replace them. The vast majority of development teams don't have the resources to make "do everything in-house" the default, but they might have the resources to selectively fork or replace a critical library once they've built an initial implementation of their project on top of said library. To your point about junior devs and learning opportunities, this is a perfect way to learn: "alright, so you built this app with this library, great, now write a replacement for that library that does A, B, and C instead of X, Y, and Z".




I agree with that. I think I just draw the line further down the scale than you. Possibly, that's because I'm an old fart and more used to having to write everything from scratch, and so therefore more used to it (and less liable to consider that wasted effort).




Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: