My limited intellect and the need for a paycheck limit my access to choice. In the same way that 1Password is built on Electron, I chose to build my front-end work on top of Angular which, in turn, builds on the capabilities of the browser.
Were I to flex my intellect and attempt to eliminate that crutch, even if I succeeded, I would not be working to my clients' advantage. Putting cost aside, my code will someday pass to other developers; the more custom work, the more to learn beyond standard toolsets.
Humans build on the work of others. I guess a consequence is over consumption, whether it be of computing resources or of the earth's.
I can fully appreciate the reasons and they are very valid, indeed sensible. We all have limited resources and it is important to deploy them where they can be most effective.
You have hit on something though. The consumption of resources in our wider society has incorrect priorities. It seems focused on producing more rather than consuming less. This is also driven by consumers who are ultimately driven by advertisers and very persusasive marketing to ensure we feel we need more, newer, faster and more features. Sadly responsible consumption and care to use resources sensibly seems to receive scant consideration.
This is all part of a wider economic cycle where the governments need to continue to drive up consumption as that drives demand which deploys more labour. The employment of labour and consumption of things generates taxation revenues. As long as they can keep us locked into debt and commitment they are assured their >=20% take (in UK on VAT sales tax, employee tax, employer tax, social tax and myriad other levies) in the great economic cycle. As long as the populous is enslaved they are assured a steady revenue stream.
I have always been intrigued by lightweight code and doing "more with less".
In 80s I had no choice as I was working in environments where I had neither memory, CPU or other resources so had to use each wisely. There was also little option to patch code so the quality of code was essential. In many cases the code went to ROM (as in case of the Z8 OTP) or EPROM and into customer sites where over air updates was not an option. The code had to work and work with the limited memory (one of the Z8s I programmed in an EPOS printer interface had 4K ROM and 236 bytes to RAM and a huge register memory model) often leaving little room for any excess let alone unused library code.
Towards end of 80s I worked a lot on the VAX 11/780 which supported hundreds of users. Maxed out our machine had 8MB of RAM. Oddly that never seemed an issue - but it quickly reigned in any plans for expansive memory use in programs! There was also the Meiko CS-1 Transputer system which even fully loaded with dozens of Transputer processors had limited memory. Code compactness was essential.
I suppose that has sort of stuck with me. When I write code now it is to work on embedded systems and increasingly porting older code from 80s and 90s to modern hardware as the hardware is no longer available. That demands and allows time to ensure the code is compact, efficient and elegant.
I write code for fun now and for that I do like writing code to be as minimal, well structured and elegant as I can. I also like to ensure that even if I use a library for a data structure or other interface that I can code it myself if I need to. I feel that understanding also allows an appreciation of the impact of using things like associative arrays (or whatever novel term each language decides to apply to it ;-)). But then that could also be by theoretical and CS/AM background coming in where I like to understand and analyse things.
I do appreciate the points on maintainable code. Libraries can make that more approachable though I suppose they can also introduce dependencies and possible future liabilities. I have always worked on basis that if code is clean, efficient, minimal and very well structured it should be maintainable.
I am not against libraries at all. I just use them sparingly and with caution. I also try to find libraries that fit with my thinking and ideals and ideally those that are modular and I can compile/link/include just the parts I want. Not always possible but always fun looking!
One thing I would say, I rather suspect your productive output will be a lot higher than mine. I am just so glad the world of computers allows for us to each be individual, choose and ideally find a niche that fits and which allows us to be content and happy. If we can do that and cover the bills what more can we ask for?
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