In this Programming By Stealth adjacent installment labeled Tidbits 3 of Y, Bart Busschots talks to us about the dangers of using other people’s code in your code, and the danger of not using other people’s code. He explains this seeming dichotomy and gives us ways to approach the problem taking a middle ground. He helps us think about how to choose whether to use other’s code and whose code to use, and even how to ensure it’s kept up to date with security patches. It’s definitely a philosophical installment and it was triggered by a recent event where a developer maliciously broke his own code, impacting a lot of developers. It’s actually sort of a success story of open source which I didn’t expect.
You can find Bart’s fabulous tutorial shownotes at pbs.bartificer.net.