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> I created a small Node+Express project, added a few dependencies to handle things like CORS, API Authentication, ORM, and data validation, and my node_modules

> I created a small Node+Express project, added a few dependencies to handle things like CORS, API Authentication, ORM, and data validation, and my node_modules folder has 300 packages already. Frontend wise, it's worse. The vast majority of node dependencies are for testing frameworks and other tools that are never shipped to the customer. For example, if you install any tool that does pretty command line output, odds are it installs some console UI libraries as a dependency, and odds are they also install a lower level curses like library as a dependency. (Also I've yet to meet a simple ORM system!) Jest is another common offender, much like every other popular testing framework, it is large and complex, and due to the nature of Javascript, it is also more powerful than a lot of the other testing frameworks I have seen (e.g. Jest can do stuff at runtime that Java frameworks need to do at compile time). Those Java frameworks that go in and mock classes are complicated, but they are all hidden behind a "single" dependency. Regarding front end build times, if a frontend website is taking any amount of time to build, something else is wrong (e.g. TypeScript is rebuilding everything one very build). Typical frontend website dev stacks have hot reloading enabled that allows for the site to be refreshed and updated the instant a file is saved. Nicer setups live change the DOM and try to avoid reloading the page unless something touching state management has been altered. (My experience is with React and Svelte alongside TS, Angular may be a different story, not sure!)

skydhash 3y ago
> Those Java frameworks that go in and mock classes are complicated, but they are all hidden behind a "single" dependency. I'd take complicated and sane over the literal software illusions that many npm packages are. > Regarding front end build times, if a frontend website is taking any amount of time to build, something else is wrong; Not necessarily. Any production build should start from scratch (the dependencies may be cached).
saurik 3y ago
> due to the nature of Javascript, it is also more powerful than a lot of the other testing frameworks I have seen (e.g. Jest can do stuff at runtime that Java frameworks need to do at compile time) oof... way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory :(.
- com2kid 3y ago
  Jest is magic, but far less magic than rewriting JVM bytecode. I generally prefer less magic over more magic.
mrweasel 3y ago
> The vast majority of node dependencies are for testing frameworks and other tools that are never shipped to the customer. So just to test I installed Django in a new virtualenv. I get a testing framework, and ORM, CORS, authentication, data validation, hot reloading and much more. It's three dependencies: django, asgiref and sqlparse. Part of it is that Django just builds a ton of stuff on their own, but they also have the Python stdlib to build on. As others mentioned you have things like Boost, the Go standard library, or even libc (of which there are multiple implementations). There's no reason why you couldn't have a JavaScript standard library, or multiple. They don't have to be shipped with the browsers, in fact I think that would be a bad idea. So when you start a new JavaScript project, you pull in your favorite standard library and when you ship your code, the bundler or whatever it's called could analyze your code pull out the relevant bits of the standard library and only include the bits you need.
- com2kid 3y ago
  > As others mentioned you have things like Boost, the Go standard library, or even libc (of which there are multiple implementations). There's no reason why you couldn't have a JavaScript standard library, or multiple. They don't have to be shipped with the browsers, in fact I think that would be a bad idea. So when you start a new JavaScript project, you pull in your favorite standard library and when you ship your code, the bundler or whatever it's called could analyze your code pull out the relevant bits of the standard library and only include the bits you need. That is kinda-sorta how things work, except JS devs like to split code up into smaller modules. https://www.npmjs.com/package/jest?activeTab=dependencies https://www.npmjs.com/package/jest?activeTab=dependencies has 4 dependencies, if you look at @jest/core a lot of its dependencies are in fact other parts of the same project. The lack of batteries included means there is a lot more room for diversity, if someone wants to write a new server to compete with express (and plenty of people have) they can follow the same middleware API standard and you can swap our your existing web server for another one but your ORM will still work! Also a minimum viable JS Rest endpoint is literally 4 or 5 lines of code. Getting cors working is 2 or 3 lines more (based on if you count the import statement as a LoC). Adding schema validation to an endpoint is another 2 LoC. The number of concepts needed to be understood to setup an endpoint in Node land is minimal, and you can then build out whatever tools you want on top. If you want a batteries included framework, there are also plenty of those, from fullstack systems Sveltekit and Next.js to multiple starter templates for backend services that give you whatever tools you wanted. People go "Python has Django" and there are huge advantages to having a single golden path, but Node has a richness in the ecosystem that lets people start off small with and choose what tooling is best as their projects grow. And at the end of the day, an ORM is going to require N lines of code, it doesn't matter if it is bundled with a framework of it is an external dependency.

skydhash 3y ago

> Those Java frameworks that go in and mock classes are complicated, but they are all hidden behind a "single" dependency. I'd take complicated and sane over the literal software illusions that many npm packages are. > Regarding front end build times, if a frontend website is taking any amount of time to build, something else is wrong; Not necessarily. Any production build should start from scratch (the dependencies may be cached).

saurik 3y ago

> due to the nature of Javascript, it is also more powerful than a lot of the other testing frameworks I have seen (e.g. Jest can do stuff at runtime that Java frameworks need to do at compile time) oof... way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory :(.

com2kid 3y ago
Jest is magic, but far less magic than rewriting JVM bytecode. I generally prefer less magic over more magic.

mrweasel 3y ago

> The vast majority of node dependencies are for testing frameworks and other tools that are never shipped to the customer. So just to test I installed Django in a new virtualenv. I get a testing framework, and ORM, CORS, authentication, data validation, hot reloading and much more. It's three dependencies: django, asgiref and sqlparse. Part of it is that Django just builds a ton of stuff on their own, but they also have the Python stdlib to build on. As others mentioned you have things like Boost, the Go standard library, or even libc (of which there are multiple implementations). There's no reason why you couldn't have a JavaScript standard library, or multiple. They don't have to be shipped with the browsers, in fact I think that would be a bad idea. So when you start a new JavaScript project, you pull in your favorite standard library and when you ship your code, the bundler or whatever it's called could analyze your code pull out the relevant bits of the standard library and only include the bits you need.

com2kid 3y ago
> As others mentioned you have things like Boost, the Go standard library, or even libc (of which there are multiple implementations). There's no reason why you couldn't have a JavaScript standard library, or multiple. They don't have to be shipped with the browsers, in fact I think that would be a bad idea. So when you start a new JavaScript project, you pull in your favorite standard library and when you ship your code, the bundler or whatever it's called could analyze your code pull out the relevant bits of the standard library and only include the bits you need. That is kinda-sorta how things work, except JS devs like to split code up into smaller modules. https://www.npmjs.com/package/jest?activeTab=dependencies https://www.npmjs.com/package/jest?activeTab=dependencies has 4 dependencies, if you look at @jest/core a lot of its dependencies are in fact other parts of the same project. The lack of batteries included means there is a lot more room for diversity, if someone wants to write a new server to compete with express (and plenty of people have) they can follow the same middleware API standard and you can swap our your existing web server for another one but your ORM will still work! Also a minimum viable JS Rest endpoint is literally 4 or 5 lines of code. Getting cors working is 2 or 3 lines more (based on if you count the import statement as a LoC). Adding schema validation to an endpoint is another 2 LoC. The number of concepts needed to be understood to setup an endpoint in Node land is minimal, and you can then build out whatever tools you want on top. If you want a batteries included framework, there are also plenty of those, from fullstack systems Sveltekit and Next.js to multiple starter templates for backend services that give you whatever tools you wanted. People go "Python has Django" and there are huge advantages to having a single golden path, but Node has a richness in the ecosystem that lets people start off small with and choose what tooling is best as their projects grow. And at the end of the day, an ORM is going to require N lines of code, it doesn't matter if it is bundled with a framework of it is an external dependency.