I wanted to write this post after the left-pad debacle but I've been beaten to it. I think we got to this state because everyone was optimizing js code for loa

I wanted to write this post after the left-pad debacle but I've been beaten to it. I think we got to this state because everyone was optimizing js code for load time-- include only what you need, use closure compiler when it matters, etc. For front end development, this makes perfect sense. Somewhere along the line, front end developers forgot about closure compiler, decided lodash was too big, and decided to do manual tree shaking by breaking code into modules. The close-contact between nodejs and front end javascript resulted in this silly idea transiting out of front-end land and into back-end land. Long time developers easily recognize the stupidity of this, but since they don't typically work in nodejs projects they weren't around to prevent it from happening. New developers: listen to your elders. Don't get all defensive about how this promised land of function-as-a-module is hyper-efficient and the be-all end-all of programming efficiency. It's not. Often times, you already know you're handing a string, you don't need to vary the character that you're using for padding and you know how many characters to pad. Write a for loop; it's easy. Note that this is exactly the sort of question I ask in coding interviews: I expect a candidate to demonstrate their ability to solve a simple problems in a simple manner; I'm not going to ask for a binary search. Separately, I'll ask a candidate to break down a bigger problem into smaller problems. In my experience, a good programmer is someone who finds simple solutions to complex problems. Note: rails is similarly pushing back against developers that have too many dependencies: https://www.mikeperham.com/2016/02/09/kill-your-dependencies/ https://www.mikeperham.com/2016/02/09/kill-your-dependencies...