App users may not be aware — and app developers often forget — that favorite app of yours might be running native code from a third party such as Facebook. Besides making your app potentially way bigger to download, it can also cause instability. When Facebook screws up, suddenly you can’t run TikTok, Spotify, and countless others apps.
This actually happened recently. 💥
👉 The big Facebook crash of 2020 and the problem of third-party SDK creep
It was as if Facebook had an “app kill switch” that they activated, and it brought down many of people’s favorite iOS apps.
For this and other reasons such as added integration complexity, when I’m making my next app, I am going to try to minimize third-party libraries.
It seems like software architecture often focuses on theoretical concepts and cool ideas, but we should look at things like this that can impact millions of real users. IMHO we developers need to consider third-party libraries as a liability to be weighed against the vulnerabilities they open up. 💥
Also, a shout out to the “App-ocalypse” video from this article. 😆
patmcg.com 