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This is C, not JavaScript. Does anyone really want an npm of the C world? Header files work. They've worked for many decades. Yes, they require software author

This is C, not JavaScript. Does anyone really want an npm of the C world? Header files work. They've worked for many decades. Yes, they require software authors to _do more work_, but they also help to eliminate a lib/ directory with 10,000 interdependent libraries that quickly becomes untrusted and frankly, ridiculous.

rat9988 7y ago
I'm not sure what you are criticizing really. npm is by far better than what we have in the C world, and why npm in particular? Because it's easy to bash?
- mschuster91 7y ago
  Far better? Lol nope. In the C world the OS distributions and the general nastiness of shipping libraries outside of an OS distro at least turn away the newbies who think that the world needs yet another module that pads a string to X length. The hardness of C is its weakness but also its strength. C programmers at least tend to know basic programming and OS management skills while JS programmers... oh hell I'm happy I got out of the mess that is "modern" frontend development.
  - jiofih 7y ago
    You still haven’t said a single word about package management.
    - mschuster91 7y ago
      oh I do have: the easier it is to publish code/packages, the more newbies and morons will flood your environment, to the point of unusability (or at least inability to do any sort of audit).
- jonny383 7y ago
  npm as a package manager is good in theory. But in practice, it does tend to create a culture of "just use a package" for everything. For example foreach [0]. [0] https://www.npmjs.com/package/foreach https://www.npmjs.com/package/foreach
  - rat9988 7y ago
    While I do easily agree that npm has created some sort of unwanted culture, I still think this culture was born partly because it's easy to publish/import. I can't say the same of the C world, moreover, there isn't only npm in the package management world.
bfrog 7y ago
The npm of the C world is the dozen different package management systems that people have crafted and spent countless hours on. They work, but the lack of a standard makes it a bit cumbersome. Building a .deb is like trying to run a american ninja course, lots and lots of esoteric obstacles. Sure you can hack a .deb, but there's about 2 dozen tools to actually make one that works like the real deal instead of your ad-hoc tarball.
sedatk 7y ago
npm is an outlier. Package management ecosystems of Python, C#, Go and Rust don’t suffer from such cultural problems or dependency hells. Arguably, you can attest some of those issues to JavaScript’s immense popularity but if even Python can manage it, others can too.
clarry 7y ago
> This is C, not JavaScript. Does anyone really want an npm of the C world? I don't care for the deep dependency chains of npm, but integrating C libraries which use a mix of different build systems, and making sure your complete project cross-compiles cleanly with different toolchains for different arches is just irritating and time consuming. I don't think the situation is ideal.

rat9988 7y ago

I'm not sure what you are criticizing really. npm is by far better than what we have in the C world, and why npm in particular? Because it's easy to bash?

mschuster91 7y ago
Far better? Lol nope. In the C world the OS distributions and the general nastiness of shipping libraries outside of an OS distro at least turn away the newbies who think that the world needs yet another module that pads a string to X length. The hardness of C is its weakness but also its strength. C programmers at least tend to know basic programming and OS management skills while JS programmers... oh hell I'm happy I got out of the mess that is "modern" frontend development.
- jiofih 7y ago
  You still haven’t said a single word about package management.
  - mschuster91 7y ago
    oh I do have: the easier it is to publish code/packages, the more newbies and morons will flood your environment, to the point of unusability (or at least inability to do any sort of audit).
jonny383 7y ago
npm as a package manager is good in theory. But in practice, it does tend to create a culture of "just use a package" for everything. For example foreach [0]. [0] https://www.npmjs.com/package/foreach https://www.npmjs.com/package/foreach
- rat9988 7y ago
  While I do easily agree that npm has created some sort of unwanted culture, I still think this culture was born partly because it's easy to publish/import. I can't say the same of the C world, moreover, there isn't only npm in the package management world.

bfrog 7y ago

The npm of the C world is the dozen different package management systems that people have crafted and spent countless hours on. They work, but the lack of a standard makes it a bit cumbersome. Building a .deb is like trying to run a american ninja course, lots and lots of esoteric obstacles. Sure you can hack a .deb, but there's about 2 dozen tools to actually make one that works like the real deal instead of your ad-hoc tarball.

sedatk 7y ago

npm is an outlier. Package management ecosystems of Python, C#, Go and Rust don’t suffer from such cultural problems or dependency hells. Arguably, you can attest some of those issues to JavaScript’s immense popularity but if even Python can manage it, others can too.

clarry 7y ago

> This is C, not JavaScript. Does anyone really want an npm of the C world? I don't care for the deep dependency chains of npm, but integrating C libraries which use a mix of different build systems, and making sure your complete project cross-compiles cleanly with different toolchains for different arches is just irritating and time consuming. I don't think the situation is ideal.