> You need large absolute numbers of users to grow a library. That's why library ecosystems like that of Python, Ruby, and Node.js have grown large in recent ye

> You need large absolute numbers of users to grow a library. That's why library ecosystems like that of Python, Ruby, and Node.js have grown large in recent years. Thats where the author missed an important point. None of those library archives have the culture of PAUSE+CPAN to constrain a minimal code quality when it comes to configuration, documentation, regression test and installation. This minimal code quality is constrained by CPAN testers, when a module hits PAUSE, before the module is seen by the unwashed masses who access CPAN. I've seen many library archives of other languages, but they are all full of junk, undocumented junk, untested junk, and junk that does not configure or install everywhere. The worst example was the LuaRocks system. The quality of the libraries in the Rocks archive had been so bad, that the church decided to remove the module keyword from Lua language, to get rid of this junk. But the code I see for Ruby/Rails, NPM/Node, or PyPy/Python is junk compared to even those Perl modules, that barely managed to convince CPAN testers. You not only need the absolute numbers, but important you need a core group starting the ecosystem who constrain a coding culture. Raw numbers are not enough. A million apes wont write a Shakespeare novel.