It’s deeply unfortunate that the lack of a standard library in JavaScript combined with the constraint of wanting to minimize shipped code size in a language that resisted dead code elimination for a long time led to... whatever this is, instead of a comprehensive stdlib.
I've been a JS/Node dev for years now (granted, post a time when Array.isArray was part of the standard), and if someone asked me to write isArray, I wouldn't have done it like this, and I'm assuming there is a reason it was done like this.
What I really see is a bunch of typical "I'm a cooler dev than you" posturing for people who haven't even actually looked at the code. That's a shame because there is a valid discussion to be had around how lots of teeny dependencies can make the npm ecosystem brittle, but bullshit posturing around how any dev should be able to write this one line is just false.
Still, it's a shame that the specifics of the way the JavaScript ecosystem has evolved mean that it's commonplace to bring in a <10 line dependency to mitigate an extremely core lack of functionality, rather than have a first-party—or be able to sensibly import a third-party—standard library. I can't think of any other language ecosystem where this is normal.
- [0] https://github.com/juliangruber/isarray/commit/c8601522e3136...
- [1] https://github.com/nodejs/node-v0.x-archive/blob/v0.1.15/Cha...