FYI, you can reply to my comments if you click on their timestamp, in case the reply box isn't showing up
> So if you're going to troll a solid argument by nitpicking, do it properly and get the details right.
First of all, I don't appreciate you calling me a troll. Someone who mentions "5kb functions" clearly has no idea of what 5kb represents, period.
And second, this is not a solid argument at all. There is logic behind it, which is why we usually have high quality stdlibs in popular languages. Javascript lacks that. So instead, javascript gets this absolute mess of an ecosystem, where things like this can happen.
Several people have brought up various issues with the way it's done now. Dependency hell, for one. Lack of discoverability, which in turn leads to duplicate libraries, which in turn leads to a system where you have 1000 dependencies, but despite your "modular" idealism you still have hundreds of duplicate dependencies. Not to mention all the duplicates of different versions of the same dependency.
This "saving lines of code" math is completely broken exactly because this stuff is not in the stdlib. The various issues with the JS ecosystem mean that the actual results are nowhere close to ideal, and have a net negative impact.
I also love when people mention how much "one time cost" is saved and back it up with similar math, completely forgetting the amount of continuous time wasted downloading and installing these dependencies every time.
You're mixing up development time & bandwidth used by client browser. I was addressing the latter. Not having to download a 500 kilobyte library in order to use a single function is a big reason why the node.js ecosystem is the way it is today. Yet it is completely unaccounted for in the article. The author did not go into how the Node.js community came about to this practice in the first place, before going on a rant about it. That is what I was criticising. Whether having minimal modules maximises utility in society is completely irrelevant, because I was addressing perspective and etiquette.
You are a troll because talking about the actual number I used and how good a grasp I have in my mind completely misses the point. You're criticising the javascript ecosystem, I get that, but you completely missed the point of my comment. If you're not going to try to understand how Node.js conventions came to be, what it's strengths and weaknesses are, what the trade-offs made were, then it's inappropriate to focus on particular weaknesses of its practices.
It's like going on about how Objective-C development sucks because it's hard to do on Linux. But you're missing the point about what Objective-C's strengths are that attracted Objective-C developers in the first place.
The author should spend some time acclimating to Node.js best practices before writing this article. And you should do the same before you start knocking down straw men to prove how right you are.
> So if you're going to troll a solid argument by nitpicking, do it properly and get the details right.
First of all, I don't appreciate you calling me a troll. Someone who mentions "5kb functions" clearly has no idea of what 5kb represents, period.
And second, this is not a solid argument at all. There is logic behind it, which is why we usually have high quality stdlibs in popular languages. Javascript lacks that. So instead, javascript gets this absolute mess of an ecosystem, where things like this can happen.
Several people have brought up various issues with the way it's done now. Dependency hell, for one. Lack of discoverability, which in turn leads to duplicate libraries, which in turn leads to a system where you have 1000 dependencies, but despite your "modular" idealism you still have hundreds of duplicate dependencies. Not to mention all the duplicates of different versions of the same dependency.
This "saving lines of code" math is completely broken exactly because this stuff is not in the stdlib. The various issues with the JS ecosystem mean that the actual results are nowhere close to ideal, and have a net negative impact.
I also love when people mention how much "one time cost" is saved and back it up with similar math, completely forgetting the amount of continuous time wasted downloading and installing these dependencies every time.