What's a good rule of thumb when deciding whether to just use a package or build from scratch when developing a new feature?

Helper that just needs PHP code do yourself.

Something specialized like zipping a file or exporting to excel, use package.

Also check if the package is well maintained. If you spend time on implementing a package only to have it be deprecated weeks later, might force you to reimplement the feature or take over maintenence of the package

@ellajhonm It’s the build versus but principle.

You need to weigh up if spending the time (and manpower) re-building something a package can offer you is worthwhile. Most people don’t want to write a view engine and router from scratch for every project, which is why they use a framework (which is just packages) like Laravel. Same principle applies for packages once your application is set up. Do you just install and configure a package, which may take a few minutes? Or do you have developers taking a salary spend their time re-writing that functionality only to end up at feature parity (the same features the package offered out of the box)?

Also, packages tend to be updated and tested, a burden you may not think of when writing your own code. Any code you write yourself, you then become the maintainers of. If you have a team of two, then a 2 million line codebase where you’ve decided to write everything from scratch could become unmanageable.