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I like (and basically agree with) the article, but I have to think it basically does a good job of pointing out the problem, and a bad job of suggesting a solut

I like (and basically agree with) the article, but I have to think it basically does a good job of pointing out the problem, and a bad job of suggesting a solution. The sheer number of dependencies of most commercial software now, and the ratio of backlog-to-developers, basically insures that the work required to check all your dependencies does not normally get done. Hypothesis: it will require a massive failure, that causes the ordinary citizen (and the ordinary really, really rich citizen) to notice that something is wrong, before it changes much. Hypothesis 2: after that happens, the first language whose dependency manager handles this problem well, will move up greatly in how widely it's used.

alkonaut 8y ago
For a 100 man year project we have accumulated around a dozen external dependencies and only two of them are transitive (one for zipping and one for logging). I think that’s fairly reasonable and about what I’d expect. So as you might have guessed it’s not a node project, but that’s my point - perhaps the idea of dependencies is manageable so long as the platform allows you to keep it reasonable. Meaning, at the very least, a good standard library.