It's true that having a lot of dependencies brings it's own problems. I worked with PHP and other tools for years that were more "batteries included" and that h

It's true that having a lot of dependencies brings it's own problems. I worked with PHP and other tools for years that were more "batteries included" and that has it's own pluses. However, and I know this an unpopular perspective, but I believe that easy-to-access libraries via package registries was actually the greatest advance for software engineering ever. Because it took code reuse to a new level. Take a look at Deno and Bun if you want to get into JavaScript but rely less on packages. I suspect that Rust and other languages that can be compiled to web assembly will continue to pick up momentum though. AI may push towards more buttoned-up platforms however, since that makes it easier for AI to generate code that works. But where we are heading eventually may be specialized agents coordinating to do the programming and eventually to some degree just handling some interfaces live or automatically configuring interfaces between systems or subsystems.