It is certainly possible to do JS development in a more controlled way. My advice is to avoid most of the JS build tools (i.e. grunt, gulp) by using npm script

It is certainly possible to do JS development in a more controlled way. My advice is to avoid most of the JS build tools (i.e. grunt, gulp) by using npm scripts (basically shell commands defines in `package.json`) to trigger build actions, or to start smaller, more specialised tools. At least then you will understand how your build works and won't have an extra layer of buggy plugins screwing things up. Also being conservative and critical of the dependencies you take on is a great idea. Many smaller dependencies are not worth it. Bigger popular libraries like lodash are often a better deal. Unfortunately this micro-module philosophy and "publish random trash to npmjs.com" attitude has created a huge amount of crud packages. I've had success organising a bigger project into multiple node packages inside the same git repository and using yarn's workspaces feature to tie it altogether. I avoid the complexity of publishing those (private) packages on npmjs.com. yarn's workspaces make it possible for my main app to find its (internal) package dependencies in the same git repo. is certainly possible to do JS development in a more controlled way. My advice is to avoid most of the JS build tools (i.e. grunt, gulp) by using npm scripts (basically shell commands defines in `package.json`) to trigger build actions, or to start smaller, more specialised tools. At least then you will understand how your build works and won't have an extra layer of buggy plugins screwing things up. Also being conservative and critical of the dependencies you take on is a great idea. Many smaller dependencies are not worth it. Bigger popular libraries like lodash are often a better deal. I've had success organising a bigger project into multiple node modules inside the same git repository and using yarn's workspaces feature to tie it altogether. I avoid the complexity of publishing those (private) modules on npmjs.com. yarn's workspaces make it possible for my main app to find its (sub-)module dependencies in the same git repo.