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Comment by CaptainOfCoit | Hacker News Reader

> External libraries are not for functionality that is used by most modern software.

Where do you draw the line though? It seems like you mostly spend your time writing HTTP servers reading/writing JSON, but is that what everyone else also spends their time doing? You'll end up with a standard library weighing GBs, just because "most developers write HTTP servers", which doesn't sound like a better solution.

I'm willing to stick my head the other way, and say I think the languages today are too large. Instead, they should have a smaller core, and the language designed in a way that you can extend the language via libraries. Basically more languages should be inspired by Lisps and everything should be a library.

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> everything should be a library.

That's exactly npm's problem, though. What everybody is avoiding to say is that you need a concept of "trusted vendors". And, for the "OSS accelerates me" business crowd, that means paying for the stuff you use.

But who would want that when you're busy chasing "market fit".

> That's exactly npm's problem, though.

I don't think that's the problem with npm. The problem with npm is that no packages are signed, at all, so it ends up trivial for hackers to push new package versions, which they obviously shouldn't be able to do.

Since Shai-Hulud scanned maintainers' computers, if the signing key was stored there too (without a password), couldn't the attackers have published signed packages?

That is, how does signing prevent publishing of malware, exactly?

How did Shai-Hulud get access to maintainers' computers?

> if the signing key was stored there too (without a password), couldn't the attackers have published signed packages?

Yeah, of course. Also if they hosted their private key for the signature on their public blog, anyone could use it for publishing.

But for the sake of the argument, why don't we assume people are correctly using the thing we're talking about?

In past comments I said that a quick win would be to lean on certificates; those can't easily be forged once a certificate is accepted.

I don't think things being libraries (modular) is at odds with a standard library.

If you have a well vetted base library, that is frequently reviewed, under goes regular security and quality checks, then you should be minimally concerned about the quality of code that goes on top.

In a well designed language, you can still export just what you need, or even replace parts of that standard library if you so choose.

This approach even handles your question: as use cases become more common, an active, invested* community (either paying or actively contributing) can add and vet modules, or remove old ones that no longer serve an active purpose.

But as soon as you find yourself "downloading the web" to get stuff done, something has probably gone horribly wrong.

IMO Python 2 was rhetorical gold standard for getting the std lib right. Mostly batteries included, but not going totally insane with it.

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