I'm sorry but that is just a horrible way to look at programming.
You shouldn't NEED to go out and look for an already done solution if it's elementary and takes minutes, if that, to write. Ever.
This is just sloppy.
> So figure out a process and resolve that, once and for all.
Tell yourself that; that was simply a counter argument to your false claim. Regardless it's fixable.
> There's no point just cutting 10% (say) of your dependencies and hoping that you won't encounter the problem on your more important dependencies.
This doesn't even make sense. What are you trying to convey here? The more dependencies you can cut out the more reproducible your builds will be. Period. Which is important when you're dealing with code that gets rapidly deployed to many production boxes.
> That's exactly why people were depending on this library.
If using left pad gave them time back because the original author could do it better, faster and cheaper...I'm not sure programming is the right type of work for these people.
What's next, are you going to outsource all your for and while loops to a module? You know, so you have less things to "maintain"?