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I Peeked into My Node_Modules Directory and You Won’t Believe What Happened Next

31 points by bryanmikaelian 10y ago

ComodoHacker 10y ago
> every time you download express, you favorite this exact tweet from Hot Pockets: introducing their new signature Hickory Ham sandwich pastries Now I'm curious how many of top 100 popular npm packages include the same shady monetization?
selectnull 10y ago
That would be outrageous... if it were true. There is no yummy when you npm install express and even if there were, the code shown would certainly not like a tweet as the POST is not authenticated. And the author has described himself as "JavaScript clickbait enthusiast." A joke? Bad one?
- drtz 10y ago
  Um, he's making the valid point that none of us have a clue what all is actually in node_modules.
  - selectnull 10y ago
    Yes, a valid point. But you can make the same argument against anything really. Do you know what your language is doing in the background? Or your database? Or your web server? Or kernel? Or your CPU? To tell obvious lies about node_modules in particular, IMHO, does not serve any purpose in raising the awareness about that particular problem.
jlgaddis 10y ago
If you came to the comments before reading the article, congratulations! I wasted my time reading it so that you don't have to.
zeusk 10y ago
> Imagine if the apple you were eating for breakfast had 291 ingredients, or if the car you drove to work had 291 parts. Someone doesn't know anything about cars.
- elaus 10y ago
  Someone doesn't get satire. This article is clearly not meant to be taken serious and the number of car parts is therefore by far not the only incorrect fact.
diegorbaquero 10y ago
Fake(?) A simple post to the Twitter API without any auth can't really do anything.
abritinthebay 10y ago
I'm stunned at the number of people in the comments not understanding that it's a joke...
patates 10y ago
I understand that this article is satire, but I don't understand what it is exactly making fun of.
- RubyPinch 10y ago
  > The left-pad fiasco the whole "oh god, excessive dependencies mean js is gonna die!" response that people had at the time, which was imo more due to their dislike of JS as opposed to the dependency management
- prezjordan 10y ago
  Honestly, there isn't much a narrative here. I just want to make people put their egos aside and laugh. I've written a few other articles in this style: https://medium.com/friendship-dot-js https://medium.com/friendship-dot-js In a way, I'm interjecting myself into some sort of "great debate" (dependencies are nuts! web frontend tooling is nuts! CSS is the worst!) and just poking fun at both sides. Planting myself firmly in the middle, without much of an opinion, just making sure we don't take ourselves too seriously. They're fun to write because it's really a stream of consciousness. I don't edit the posts, I don't fix typos. So it's public therapy in that regard.
  - patates 10y ago
    Nice. Thanks for the explanation.
radicality 10y ago
Was the part where he can't figure out how to count the number of directories supposed to be funny?
- prezjordan 10y ago
  Yeah, did you like it?
  - tilt_error 10y ago
    ~> got a light? zsh: no matches found: light? [Quite an oldie]
m0j0l 10y ago
Guys, it's satire. Pretty good satire (the code block where he keeps mistyping bash commands should have given it away). Also note how the author's tagline is 'javascript clickbait enthusiast' :-)
k__ 10y ago
But it is a true problem, haha. I know real good programmers, who ride on the "don't reinvent the wheel" train to the max. And while the code base don't get cluttered with "ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation[s] of half of Common Lisp" we implemented ourself, we now have hundrets of modules, which themself probably contain this "ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp"

> every time you download express, you favorite this exact tweet from Hot Pockets: introducing their new signature Hickory Ham sandwich pastries Now I'm curious how many of top 100 popular npm packages include the same shady monetization?

selectnull 10y ago

That would be outrageous... if it were true. There is no yummy when you npm install express and even if there were, the code shown would certainly not like a tweet as the POST is not authenticated. And the author has described himself as "JavaScript clickbait enthusiast." A joke? Bad one?

drtz 10y ago
Um, he's making the valid point that none of us have a clue what all is actually in node_modules.
- selectnull 10y ago
  Yes, a valid point. But you can make the same argument against anything really. Do you know what your language is doing in the background? Or your database? Or your web server? Or kernel? Or your CPU? To tell obvious lies about node_modules in particular, IMHO, does not serve any purpose in raising the awareness about that particular problem.

jlgaddis 10y ago

If you came to the comments before reading the article, congratulations! I wasted my time reading it so that you don't have to.

zeusk 10y ago

> Imagine if the apple you were eating for breakfast had 291 ingredients, or if the car you drove to work had 291 parts. Someone doesn't know anything about cars.

elaus 10y ago
Someone doesn't get satire. This article is clearly not meant to be taken serious and the number of car parts is therefore by far not the only incorrect fact.

diegorbaquero 10y ago

Fake(?) A simple post to the Twitter API without any auth can't really do anything.

abritinthebay 10y ago

I'm stunned at the number of people in the comments not understanding that it's a joke...

patates 10y ago

I understand that this article is satire, but I don't understand what it is exactly making fun of.

RubyPinch 10y ago
> The left-pad fiasco the whole "oh god, excessive dependencies mean js is gonna die!" response that people had at the time, which was imo more due to their dislike of JS as opposed to the dependency management
prezjordan 10y ago
Honestly, there isn't much a narrative here. I just want to make people put their egos aside and laugh. I've written a few other articles in this style: https://medium.com/friendship-dot-js https://medium.com/friendship-dot-js In a way, I'm interjecting myself into some sort of "great debate" (dependencies are nuts! web frontend tooling is nuts! CSS is the worst!) and just poking fun at both sides. Planting myself firmly in the middle, without much of an opinion, just making sure we don't take ourselves too seriously. They're fun to write because it's really a stream of consciousness. I don't edit the posts, I don't fix typos. So it's public therapy in that regard.
- patates 10y ago
  Nice. Thanks for the explanation.

radicality 10y ago

Was the part where he can't figure out how to count the number of directories supposed to be funny?

prezjordan 10y ago
Yeah, did you like it?
- tilt_error 10y ago
  ~> got a light? zsh: no matches found: light? [Quite an oldie]

m0j0l 10y ago

Guys, it's satire. Pretty good satire (the code block where he keeps mistyping bash commands should have given it away). Also note how the author's tagline is 'javascript clickbait enthusiast' :-)

k__ 10y ago

But it is a true problem, haha. I know real good programmers, who ride on the "don't reinvent the wheel" train to the max. And while the code base don't get cluttered with "ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation[s] of half of Common Lisp" we implemented ourself, we now have hundrets of modules, which themself probably contain this "ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp"