I used to write code for environments on which I had almost complete control. If there was third-party code running on these environments, it was because I (or the development team) explicitly allowed it to run. And that level of control felt good!

However, these days I author a lot of code that run in environments on which I have very little control. This feels frustrating at times. Adding client-side form validation on a HTML form that is already being validated with JS client side forces you to implement things in a certain way. And don't get me started on building a HTML email that gets rewritten in 100 ways by the different tech it touches it.

One day while having to implement a workaround after a workaround, I stopped. "Wait.. Am I the third party here?". It felt like I was. I guess I had an epiphany. This changed my mindset when approaching such tasks. I am the third party.