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> There are too many NPM packages, and worse, too many people quick to add as many dependencies as possible, resulting in crazy dependency trees that you should never actually see in the wild. Additionally, it seems to only be in the node ecosystem that you see single authors with hundreds of packages. Why they do this, I do not know...

Because javascript has a weak standard library.

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Nah it's less about the standard library and more about the fact that Javascript doesn't have dead code removal so keeping a package small is one way to ensure you aren't pulling in code you aren't going to use.

Of course the failure mode here is that you if you still choose a batteries included framework. (i.e. Angular, or a React powered framework) you end up pulling in a whole bunch of code you don't use and the list of dependencies is unmanageable. But because javascript was born in the browser and most javascript still has to be shipped to a browser it has constraints most other languages do not.

Maybe the most popular small libraries should be merged together into a single library that can be used to reduce the number of dependencies, in the hope it can become a standard. Like a jQuery for npm.

I think that was the motivation of https://js.foundation

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