--- title: Dependency Cultures - Richard Feldman | SSW 2026 | daily.dev description: Richard Feldman's conference talk argues that dependency count in software projects is primarily a cultural choice rather than a technical necessity. Using... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/dependency-cultures---richard-feldman-ssw-2026-apaz9sdsk twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Dependency Cultures - Richard Feldman | SSW 2026 | daily.dev og:description: Richard Feldman's conference talk argues that dependency count in software projects is primarily a cultural choice rather than a technical necessity. Using... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/dependency-cultures---richard-feldman-ssw-2026-apaz9sdsk og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/apAZ9sDsK.png og:image:alt: Dependency Cultures - Richard Feldman | SSW 2026 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Dependency Cultures - Richard Feldman | SSW 2026 **[Lobsters](https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters)** · 44 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Richard Feldman's conference talk argues that dependency count in software projects is primarily a cultural choice rather than a technical necessity. Using data comparing dependency graphs of programming language websites (TypeScript, Node.js, Python, Ruby, Rust, Zig, Go, Roc) and open-source games, he shows wildly different dependency counts for projects doing essentially the same job. He contrasts npm culture (many micro-dependencies, frequent auto-updates) with C++ gamedev culture (vendor everything, minimal deps) and Go's middle-ground approach. Key points: more dependencies mean more attack vectors (citing the event-stream/flatmap-stream malware incident and Log4Shell), automatic updates via tools like Dependabot increase risk as malicious packages on npm grew 1000%+ since 2020. He advocates for Mitchell Hashimoto's philosophy: fork and trim dependencies to your use case, never update unless necessary, vet every commit. He illustrates with a personal example of building a custom syntax highlighter for the Roc language website instead of using highlight.js, resulting in a smaller, faster, more correct solution with zero dependencies. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Dependencies are a Liability](https://daily.dev/posts/dependencies-are-a-liability-ma5gy36jj) · Pointers Gone Wild · 143 upvotes · 18 comments - [You can fork a package, but can you own it?](https://daily.dev/posts/you-can-fork-a-package-but-can-you-own-it--ymcqjv72s) · Architecture Weekly · 12 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#security](https://daily.dev/tags/security), [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#architecture](https://daily.dev/tags/architecture), [#npm](https://daily.dev/tags/npm) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/dependency-cultures---richard-feldman-ssw-2026-apaz9sdsk) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Dependency Cultures - Richard Feldman | SSW 2026","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/dependency-cultures---richard-feldman-ssw-2026-apaz9sdsk","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/dependency-cultures---richard-feldman-ssw-2026-apaz9sdsk"},"datePublished":"2026-07-29T13:48:54.422Z","dateModified":"2026-07-29T13:49:16.340Z","description":"Richard Feldman's conference talk argues that dependency count in software projects is primarily a cultural choice rather than a technical necessity. 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