So what does NPM do differently than plugin managers from other languages? I can't name one where the dependency hell is this big.
1. A not insignificant number of packages are either polyfilling things in browsers, or providing a consistent (or ‘isomorphic') API for certain things across both browsers and Node.js, or adding things that should have been in a standard library.
2. A lot of packages still seem to be distributed primarily as CommonJS and not ES Modules. CommonJS makes tree-shaking harder than it should, so it was often just easier to break what should have been a single library into many smaller pieces.
Hopefully in the not too distant future library maintainers get around to reading the Node.js docs[0] fix some of this.
One of the things I love about Go is generally people are a little more forgiving to copying something around a couple times instead of making a lib for everything.
Come to think of it, something that does for packages what jQuery did to bring (some) sanity to browser incompatibilities.
In fact this is the root of the issue. It's important to realize that `node_modules` for any project in Popular Framework X will be almost identical. Most of the packages are related to compiling, bundling, and the development environment and a small minority are actual client-side dependencies. Even the frameworks themselves are pretty light -- React has a grand total of 2 dependencies. It's packaging the entire toolchain that causes most of the bloat.
Many a time I've forked a dependency for one reason or another, and kept it up to date with upstream. Sure, it's a few more steps to update, but allows for deep customizations without waiting for original authors to support it (if ever).
Another reason to fork/copy code, is that its development has ceased long ago. In that case, it totally makes sense to carry on the work, in-house at first.
Regarding the article, sometimes copying code keeps the entire codebase easier to understand and manage without having an external dependency.
I complete agree. To temper my comment, I've seen plenty of bad examples of copying dependencies, bundling old un-updated versions, with undocumented changes. In such case, it's true that copying leads to a worse kind of dependency.
JavaScript is super popular and used by companies so there are lots of people releasing their own open source project in an attempt to hustle into a well-paid job by looking more experienced than they really are.
I'd say it's the same reason why there are so many bad Java and Php tutorials.
C++ for comparison is shielded from this because it's not the kind of programming language that you would learn in a weekend seminar to improve your salary.