> Just because you're experience this effect (which blows), doesn't mean the tool and related tooling are somehow broken. I've been in the node scene since 0.1

> Just because you're experience this effect (which blows), doesn't mean the tool and related tooling are somehow broken. I've been in the node scene since 0.10. That's around 10 years. My packages have billions of downloads annually. My viewpoint here carries the weight of hours of debug time and frustration and confused users of my code, as well as meeting and knowing the npm staff at the time quite personally, and knowing under which circumstances package lock files were implemented. They are broken. > These Regex issues should be fixed They do, pretty much immediately after they're reported. > libraries should update to safe versions I check all the version ranges of dependent libraries when I push a patch with vuln fixes. They get pulled just fine without needing to update every single package. This is what version ranges are for. > things should advance Yes but this is nebulous and vague and aside from the point. > and any incentive we have we should use to make this happen. I don't see where the disagreement is. This is exactly what happens all the time, nothing is the problem here. I don't get your point. --- Package lock files were designed in a few short days and pushed out prematurely without much review by a single Npm employee (at the time) since they promised it for the v5 release. They were on a time crunch because they were trying to keep with Node.js's next major release timeline, which operates independently of npm's (at least, that's how it was conveyed to me). So this change got pushed out, had an absolute mountain of bugs that took ages to fix (e.g. at one point adding a new dependency would delete your entire node_modules folder), and promised added security when in reality they do nothing of the sort. Instead, they cause subtle caching-related bugs, they add an artifact to source control (which is always code smell in my book), crap up diffs/PRs, cause headaches across platforms, and do very little to help... anything, really. They're super, super broken by design. Yet npm tells you you need them ("please commit this to your repository") and refuses to do basic security things without them (npm audit). So why were they added? IIRC it was because the version resolution was a massive strain on npm's servers, so lockfiles removed the need to fetch tons of version information each time you added another dependency. Oh, and don't even begin to whine about them on Twitter (at the time), lest you be yelled at by the implementor for being ignorant or something. It was a shit show. They add absolutely nothing to the industry.