Comment on When "Everything" Becomes Too Much: The npm Package Chaos of 2024 - Socket
Jesus_666@feddit.de 7 months agoThe lack of a standard library is really the worst offender. Most of a given package directory is filled with middleware to handle JS’s lack of everything.
FlorianSimon@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Is that still a valid argument in 2024? The standard library has grown since the leftpad scandal. JS does have standard leftpad now.
It’s a genuine question, I no longer write Javascript for a living.
Jesus_666@feddit.de 7 months ago
Compared to other languages it’s still very barebones – but admittedly some of the bloat is also because the JS world is kinda set in its ways. I still see people use jQuery for basic selector queries and SASS for basic CSS variables.
Another factor is that developers these days assume that users have fast unmetered connections. Loading 800 kB of minified gzipped JS from ten different domains is seen as no big deal. When the cost of adding piles of dependencies is considered nil there’s no impetus to avoid them.
FlorianSimon@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
That last point truly bothers me, too. It’s fine to have a bloated work environment (some people use Visual Studio, after all). But that complexity should not get offloaded to your users. Webdevs need to do better on this front, it’s not 2015 anymore.