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> Installing nodejs is one download. After that it's running npm install and everything just works.

Yep. Even wehen it works as exepcted it might become shitshow.

Couple of years ago I tried to install a small library (~50kB or less), and npm install pulled in 900MB of crap. I didn't expected npm to even contain so many packages back then.

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That’s why I created npm-download-size recently, to quickly decide the size of a package in total. It has a cli and a web frontend: https://arve0.github.io/npm-download-size/

Then use another library. Is that a fault of npm or node that people developing some libs don't know what they're doing? The point here is that ecosystem allows your package to be one 'npm install' away from the user. The fact that you choose to tangle yourself up from complexity is no one's fault but yours.

(for the record to me 900MB seems like a grossly overestimated number, I would request a link on that)

it was one of async/await precompilers. I do not remember which one, I tried all of them, except this one which I removed right after npm install.

Is that a fault of npm or node

Nobody said it was.

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