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Comment by TimTheTinker | Hacker News Reader

How many dependencies does your package.json file declare? Which versions of node/npm does your team use?

If you're on recent-enough versions and are using any popular libraries, you will have seen the deprecation notices pile up during npm install for downstream dependencies.

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Dependencies issue is not exclusive to frameworks. If you don't want to reinvent the wheel, there's no way around using packages, even if you go with vanilla JS.

None? I use it from ClojureScript. I've been maintaining a React-based app with Semantic UI for 10 years now.

Then you aren't doing what the author is talking about.

The new insight then is if you do things then bad things will happen?

Do you mean your package.json literally has no dependencies declared (or you don't even have package.json)? If so, you're not using frontend tooling like 98% of development teams.

I don't have a package.json. I don't use npm. But I do use React. Yes, I am not like [insert scientifically determined very very high percentage] of teams out there — but that's exactly my point. There are ways to do frontend development without the treadmill.

Thing is, we are the reason for the treadmill being there: we love the new shiny, we call software that is stable "dead", we actively mock software that doesn't have a lot of churn as "not being developed". So I guess we deserve what we get.

Java and .net developers also uses dependencies, and they too need to upgrade their dependencies (and sometimes switch out deprecated stuff). Definitely not a Frontend issue.

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