[Go Make Things] Evergreen tech is an asset (and dependencies are a liability)

By rahmat hidayat

Wednesday, June 19, 2024

​ I learned how to code over a decade ago. The HTML, CSS, and JavaScript I learned then still work now. New stuff has come along to make some of the hard stuff easier (I used to build grids with float), but the old stuff still works across all major browsers just fine. I learned PHP a decade ago, too. PHP 8 has introduced some nice new methods, but the old PHP I learned and wrote years ago still works just fine. It runs on almost any server, and gets the job done. But modern libraries and frameworks aren't like that. As my friend Baldur Bjarnson writes (emphasis mine)… But the React skills I have are all out of date and obsolete. I would effectively have to start from scratch even if I wanted to get back into React work. Everything React has changed in ways that are fundamentally incompatible. The same applies to my skills in Svelte. I first got into Svelte with version 3. They're now releasing version 5 and are completely changing their approach to state management. My old Svelte skills are obsolete but they're still there, useless and cluttering up my memory. Framework skills are perishable, but are easily just as complicated as the foundation layers of the web platform and it takes just as much – if not more – effort to keep them up to date. That last line is particularly important. Every dependency creates a liability for your code base. Every bug fix requires an update. The deeper the dependency tree, the more likely that seemingly small updates break other parts of your build. Major, breaking updates bring new features. APIs change. Code needs to be rewritten. You can skip them, but eventually you find yourself relying on outdated code that stops receiving security updates and can't do things you want to do because those features are only available in newer, breaking versions. Do you update and have to refactor your code base, or leave them in and hack around them? Every dependency is a liability. Compare that to platform native technology. It's nearly always backwards compatible. Features rarely get deprecated. New features can be run in tandem with what you already have. You can progressively enhance your way into new features, without having to rewrite the whole thing. Given the choice, evergreen tech is nearly always a better choice than third-party dependencies. If you're struggling with this now, or want to make sure you don't struggle with this in the future, get in touch. I help organizations write and ship code faster by simplifying their code base. Cheers, Chris ​ Want to share this with others or read it later? View it in a browser.​ ​

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