Beelining Techs: Thoughts on contrib vs custom code

In the Civilization game series, beelining is a strategy of forging ahead on the tech tree on a particular branch to gain an advantage over competing civilizations either in the form of a new military unit or a building bonus of some kind. By only focusing on one branch, you tend to run into stumbling blocks later on in the game when you're forced to go back and work older technologies that are pre-requisites for you to move forward.

Oftentimes with projects, there are challenges that come up that can be more easily solved with custom code, rather than relying on contributed modules. In doing so, you're oftentimes beelining towards solving a problem ahead of the community around you. I plan on discussing when it's appropriate to go it alone with custom solutions vs. working in the contrib ecosystem, along with thoughts on how to keep yourself from "beelining all the things" and ending up with a completely custom, unworkable mess.

Blogpost coming soon...