Why I Build CLI Tools with Zero External Dependencies

For a long time I wasn't really programming. My university degree covered a lot of things — but actual building wasn't one of them. Professors mentioned AI, algorithms, low-level concepts. They'd describe what something did, roughly how it worked underneath. But nobody told you the truth: building it isn't just calling a couple of functions and moving on. There was always something deeper below. At some point I decided to stop waiting and start digging. I want to be clear about something: this isn't about dismissing other languages or tools. If I'm working on a company project or something with deadlines and other people depending on it, I'll adapt. I'll use whatever makes sense. But when the project is mine — when nobody is waiting, when the only requirement is that I understand every single line — I build from scratch. Everything. My own tokenizer. My own CLI parser. My own command executor. Not because libraries don't exist. They do, and some of them are excellent. But because there