I fail to see any actual advantage in the approach proposed by this article; it would have the exact same problems, or very similar ones, since, versioning or n

I fail to see any actual advantage in the approach proposed by this article; it would have the exact same problems, or very similar ones, since, versioning or not, everything ultimately comes down to trusting the package's authors. Nobody can guarantee that they won't introduce breaking changes, specially by accident. Versions offer something that, at least, resembles a deterministic way to know what code one's actually shipping. On another note, I always understood that using the latest version by default was sensible. For me, it means that, in a new project, one should start with the latest version of whatever third-party packages one wants to use. Once development actually gets underway, then the latest versions at that time should be pinned.