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When trying out some C++ I was surprised by how many projects bundled the library source code, essentially finding any actual client code a pain.

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As a C++ developer, I maybe-ironically have this same complaint with JavaScript projects ;P. I particularly hate it when people embed minified versions of libraries, as line-based search and display then will experience a hit for essentially every query on the one giant line that is tens of kilocharacters long.

If your language lacks a de facto way to install dependencies, people will commit vendored code. See: C, C++.

If your language's package manager puts your deps within the repo directory by default, people will commit the vendored code. See: Node, Go (since go.mod).

As long as we can all agree that committing compiled code is a crime punishable by 24 hours in the shame cube.

I have this issue with GitHub code search very often. I'll search up a function to see some examples of how to use it, and the first 20 or so pages of results are just copies of the source where its defined.

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