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Comment by the_sleaze_ | Hacker News Reader

Aside from the specific tools in use (JS has a higher maintenance burden than a golang lib, for example)

You really need to look at the issues/updates ratio. Are there 57 open issues that haven't been triaged or addressed? Are there multiple open PRs or requests that should be easily added and are just sitting there rotting?

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Yes, those are reasonable metrics. But ive seen too many people outright dismiss using a library that has been stable for a long time for not having had an update in like half a year and rather go for one that is only half baked but had one in the last few weeks.

Thats why I push back against the notion that no updates = abandoned. Personal, painful, experience.

But "a few months" isn't 5 years, right? Last update in January 2025 seems fine for a lot of things. If that was January 2020 I'd probably bypass it as well.

This second comment was more meant as an elaboration on why I personally dislike the not updated recently = abandoned assumption that a lot of people take by default, rather than actually checking on whether its abandoned.

As in, "I've personally witnessed people passing over mature libraries that just don't need any more updates in favor of ones that aren't really production ready but get frequent updates, which causes quite a bad dev experience down the line".

I am not really good at articulating my thoughts properly, so thanks for making me write this longer comment.

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