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I don't know about the feasibility to understand all that's going on on your computer with the ongoing stuffing of layers over layers (kernel, userspace, "conta

I don't know about the feasibility to understand all that's going on on your computer with the ongoing stuffing of layers over layers (kernel, userspace, "container", language VM such as node/v8 or JVM, framework, etc.). If anything, I'd expect younger devs to understand less of it all, since they don't learn from the ground up (eg from hardware). But there has always been the option to use interchangable standard components based on POSIX, SQL, etc. as a remedy to become critically dependent and vulnerable. In fact, node.js started as just one of many implementations of the CommonJS module loading mechanism and base API, in addition to being based on one of the most portable languages of all time. But I guess no amount of education will make the kind of developers go away who think 400+ package dependencies for a trivial app is a good thing, or that you absolutely have to write a proprietary not-quite-JavaScript language compiled to JavaScript via babel, or that node.js in itself is a goal, rather than merely an implementation.

a_bonobo 8y ago
Not knowing much about node.js, wouldn't the most logical step now to make a standard node.js library that implements the majority of the functions of those ~400 packages? Vetting one package is easier than vetting 400. I guess that's what Rails did in the very beginning, I keep on discovering in-built magic
- buboard 8y ago
  i think a bigger issue is that many people don't even write javascript, but another language that transpiles to it
- rpeden 8y ago
  Node does have a standard library. It's not massive, but there's a lot more available out of the box than is available in a browser. The tricky part is that lots is npm packages end up bundled into an app that runs in the browser. It's just a guess, but I'd guess that significantly more npm imports end up running in the browser than in Node. So even giving Node a standard library as extensive as Ruby's wouldn't help as much as one would hope.

a_bonobo 8y ago

Not knowing much about node.js, wouldn't the most logical step now to make a standard node.js library that implements the majority of the functions of those ~400 packages? Vetting one package is easier than vetting 400. I guess that's what Rails did in the very beginning, I keep on discovering in-built magic

buboard 8y ago
i think a bigger issue is that many people don't even write javascript, but another language that transpiles to it
rpeden 8y ago
Node does have a standard library. It's not massive, but there's a lot more available out of the box than is available in a browser. The tricky part is that lots is npm packages end up bundled into an app that runs in the browser. It's just a guess, but I'd guess that significantly more npm imports end up running in the browser than in Node. So even giving Node a standard library as extensive as Ruby's wouldn't help as much as one would hope.