Abstracting away problems

There is an abundance of utilities and libraries these days to help make a full-featured application. It can be quite easy to integrate these third-party systems within your application. At times, however, you may need to replace one third-party library with another. Alternatively, you may find yourself relying on the implementation that a third-party system provides, only to find that the implementation has changed with a later update. How can you avoid these potential problems?

Creating a dependency on code that is outside your control can create problems for you in the future. If a change is introduced in a library that you depend on, it could potentially break your system. Or, if your requirements change and the system no longer fits your specific needs you may have to rewrite large portions of your application.

Don't depend directly on any third-party system. Abstract away the details so that your application depends only on an interface that you define. If you...