Evaluating Third-Party Libraries: Good, Bad & Tips for Effective Usage

The rise in popularity of open-source software has made the usage of third-party libraries nearly universal. Projects often use dozens of them and those, in turn, use dozens more. We want to avoid reinventing the wheel and if someone else has already solved a problem, it doesn't make sense for us to solve it again. The Good and the Not-So-Good At its best, open-source software provides solutions that have been thoroughly vetted by hundreds or thousands of users. Bugs have been...