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This is an extremely clickbait title. The 50GB figure is the number of Node modules a developer has installed on their local machine that are duplicated betwee

This is an extremely clickbait title. The 50GB figure is the number of Node modules a developer has installed on their local machine that are duplicated between multiple Node projects/repos checked out on that machine. Even for the notoriously bloated JS ecosystem that seems well above average, even assuming any given developer has >1 project checked out at once. For reference, I'm a developer primarily working in JS. I use an old 2017 MB Air with the smallest disk (120GB) and have many many Node projects checked out (including random GH FOSS I've contributed to once). I don't use pnpm & I've never had disk space issues. Don't get me wrong, pnpm is cool. I've started trying it out and will likely convert a a lot of stuff. But 50GB is extreme even for Node.

lukevp 4y ago
I didn’t really find it clickbait. It’s not unusual for a complex react app to have 600+ mb in dependencies, and at work I have at least 50 repositories checked out at once. 50gb may be a bit of a stretch for most users but I imagine multi-gig savings to be fairly common! We’ve moved many of our projects over to pnpm.
- stingraycharles 4y ago
  By that metric OP would need to have almost 100 complex react projects checked out to reach the 50GB number. Seems highly unusual to me.
  - seba_dos1 4y ago
    Not really. Some dependencies can be heavy. As soon as your projects include, let's say, electron, you're having ~200MB consumed by a single dependency on top of anything else used by your project. And if you had your node_modules populated by older npm version, you may have multiple copies of that dependency within a single project.
Aeolun 4y ago
> 50GB is extreme even for Node Depends entirely on how many projects you regularly work with. pnpm is objectively better than npm in many other way too though. It does all the things that npm finally realized they needed to do in version 8 by default.
- lucideer 4y ago
  No disagreement - as I said in the last line of my comment. Only taking specific issue with the hyperbole hook in this article.
viridian 4y ago
> even assuming any given developer has >1 project checked out at once. One? Oh lord you don't want to look at my work machine then. Probably a couple dozen projects pulled down, and once added, they aren't getting removed until I have to swap PCs.
- seba_dos1 4y ago
  "A couple dozen" is a pretty conservative estimate:)
- lucideer 4y ago
  I work in code analysis automation so I have way more than a couple dozen but the point is: 1. I'm not an average case. 2. Even I've never hit 50GB 3. (not mentioned in my original post but...) if you did reach 50GB that's likely going to be because you've a load of old projects lying around needing deleting. Using a new tool in other to retain that dysfunction isn't exactly a great recommendation. Pnpm is great for other reasons: not recommending against it, just calling out the ridiculous title here.

lukevp 4y ago

I didn’t really find it clickbait. It’s not unusual for a complex react app to have 600+ mb in dependencies, and at work I have at least 50 repositories checked out at once. 50gb may be a bit of a stretch for most users but I imagine multi-gig savings to be fairly common! We’ve moved many of our projects over to pnpm.

stingraycharles 4y ago
By that metric OP would need to have almost 100 complex react projects checked out to reach the 50GB number. Seems highly unusual to me.
- seba_dos1 4y ago
  Not really. Some dependencies can be heavy. As soon as your projects include, let's say, electron, you're having ~200MB consumed by a single dependency on top of anything else used by your project. And if you had your node_modules populated by older npm version, you may have multiple copies of that dependency within a single project.

Aeolun 4y ago

> 50GB is extreme even for Node Depends entirely on how many projects you regularly work with. pnpm is objectively better than npm in many other way too though. It does all the things that npm finally realized they needed to do in version 8 by default.

lucideer 4y ago
No disagreement - as I said in the last line of my comment. Only taking specific issue with the hyperbole hook in this article.

viridian 4y ago

> even assuming any given developer has >1 project checked out at once. One? Oh lord you don't want to look at my work machine then. Probably a couple dozen projects pulled down, and once added, they aren't getting removed until I have to swap PCs.

seba_dos1 4y ago
"A couple dozen" is a pretty conservative estimate:)
lucideer 4y ago
I work in code analysis automation so I have way more than a couple dozen but the point is: 1. I'm not an average case. 2. Even I've never hit 50GB 3. (not mentioned in my original post but...) if you did reach 50GB that's likely going to be because you've a load of old projects lying around needing deleting. Using a new tool in other to retain that dysfunction isn't exactly a great recommendation. Pnpm is great for other reasons: not recommending against it, just calling out the ridiculous title here.