by Rachael » Tue Sep 24, 2019 8:31 pm
I really don't have a "paranoia" about third-party libraries entirely - just ones that I haven't heard about.
The bigger and more popular ones usually have bigger teams of coders on them, and more people willing to fix issues - they become more flexible and in the long run the code becomes stronger and more stable as a result. If we cut out third-party libraries completely, we'd probably have to shitcan things like OpenGL, which itself is a library unto itself, despite how deep it has to go into the OS to do its job.
When a library has proven itself to be well and good, then I have no issue with it. After all, I know GZDoom would not be where it is today, were it not for OpenAL, FluidSynth, Timidity, ZLib, DUMB, AsmJit, GME, libADL and libOPN, just to name a few - that's not even counting the biggest ones, Vulkan and OpenGL themselves. But there's a caveat to it: Some of these libraries have proven to have issues of their own, and sometimes have even had to have direct updates from their respective developers themselves. Now - let me say with no uncertainty that I am quite grateful that the developers have done that, and everyone is better for it since they did - but just imagine if they weren't there, or if they completely ignored us - and how we would get plagued with issues later on.
As dpJudas said - adopting a third-party dependency is always a risk. It might save you time - or it might cause you far more frustration and grief in the long run than if you had just done it yourself, which is especially true for smaller tasks.
And I can tell you even from just scripting things, that in general, I prefer to write my own code, than depend on someone else's, and get intertwined by whatever licensing scheme they come up with.