I use a lot of micro modules. And I think micro modules are a good idea.
But this whole thing is freaking funny. You gotta acknowledge that.
But this whole thing is freaking funny. You gotta acknowledge that.
I think a lot of this is implying "don't use micro packages on your package manager, copy and paste code in helpers.js FTW". I've seen people advocating this as if it's a better solution than have npm remain consistent even after people unpublish packages.
It's best to treat NPM as mutable and don't depend on it. For example, I check in node_modules to git, even though everyone says no, use shrinkwrap! Yeah, that would definately help here.
NPM is to blame here and people are right to make fun of the entire ecosystem around it. Also, It's just easy and funny.
Noone will start copying stuff around just because of this I believe. The micromodule ecosystem emerged because it works for people apparently. Devs will find ways to make it work better.
But rather because they didn't wish to lawyer up for a trademark dispute that they had no particular reason to want to be involved in. (One where there was a reasonable chance that they would lose.)
$ echo "function leftpad(str, len, ch) { return ""; }" > leftpad.js
$ git commit -a -m "fuck you" && git push
I was bitten by a JS function change in a package that has been named also in this thread. It was an "oh, we moved that functionality to a new function, but reused the old name for a new function that does nothing like the old". And no semantic versioning.
Slipped through UI testing and broke production functionality. I did not like dependencies before, and I like them even less now.
And people keep wondering why everyone's software is so ridiculously bad.
A sane package repository won't disappear overnight, or ever. I can still install packages distributed with Debian Potato, the first ever Linux distro I used, which is now 15 years old. The code that I wrote against the libraries distributed with it will still compile, and had I only burnt stripped binaries to a CD back then, they would still runtime-link and run today on a brand-new install. And because it is all free software, the people and orgs who wrote those libraries, compiler, and standards, had given up their rights to force unpublication.
In a sane package management system, and with version pinning on the consumer's side, your hissy fit would have had exactly zero effect. Assuming your package were free software, people could fork it, and still make improvements.