JS is definitely not a good example of “standing on the shoulder of giants”, the language has always lacked a sane standard library (it is getting better nowada

JS is definitely not a good example of “standing on the shoulder of giants”, the language has always lacked a sane standard library (it is getting better nowadays), plus due to optimizing for size and depending on “tree shakers” they have probably the worst dependency graphs ever. But should I really start writing a graph algorithm for the 15th time? I believe the point of the quote is not “blindly add dependencies”, but that a significant boost in productivity can come from reusing already existing, high quality code that fits in with the projects requirements. Left-pad is clearly not such for most projects, and “it is not a free lunch” (:D) in that maintaining dependencies also has a cost.