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That isn't the web, that's NPM. It's tooling. Mistaking the two is like mistaking C++ for Visual Studio, confusing the forest for the trees. You can write C++ i
by krapp 2y ago
That isn't the web, that's NPM. It's tooling. Mistaking the two is like mistaking C++ for Visual Studio, confusing the forest for the trees. You can write C++ in a text editor and compile it in a shell.
And all that "depth" comes with a cost. There was no "left-pad" in the JQuery days. No installation or compilation necessary. No brittle dependency tree hundreds of levels deep loading God knows what God knows where for purposes God only knows. No single point of failure in a proprietary package manager with only a single global namespace. You put files on your server, maybe linked to a CDN, and it all just worked.
- beardyw 2y agoI first used npm about 10 years ago to install something I needed and all was fine. I came back to it again, same package, 3 years ago and it was such a mess. The dependencies had mushroomed out of control. I went through the code and couldn't believe people were using packages for one line of code for a slightly different approach to something js did anyway. The problem is adding dependencies is free to the developer. It is everyone else who pays.
- mrinfinitiesx 2y agoThe pain of logging in to a fleet of servers and seeing the number of npm packages that need updating and how many critical packages need updated..
- rubicon33 2y agoI see your point, and I agree. Maybe I should have said “web development” because while it’s true that the WEB can still be simple, it’s the world of professional development that has gone off the rails. So much tooling. So many packages. It seems like the essence of web development that we once had is gone, replaced by this enormous tool chain and 3rd party developer hellscape.