>In JS you need a handful of third party packages just to tell if a number is odd.
You really don't, but for some reason JS developers have decided that this is the optimal way to check if a number is odd.
You really don't, but for some reason JS developers have decided that this is the optimal way to check if a number is odd.
People complain about these tiny packages they find on npm the whole time, but usually these packages come from people learning how to create their first npm packages, or creating or following tutorials. They aren't serious packages used by typical developers for production apps.
If you go to the isEven github repository you can even see "I created this in 2014, when I was learning how to program." If you hover over his 'organisation' you'll see the text "This is a joke. You'll only see this org if you are attempting to troll me about repositories I created when I was learning to program."
The package was written as an exercise in learning how to create a small, useless package. But a huge portion of the JS development community choosed to import and use the package anyway.
They're jokes or satire or learning repositories, like `install-is`: "Installing this package installs a bunch of useless packages" or Stalinsort or module-practice-january. The most serious looking dependents are by the same author.
is-odd, alongside a bunch of other microdependencies are almost all the work of one person, who made as many micropackages as possible and then PRd them into other more popular libraries. There are not 6 million people directly downloading `is-odd` a day. At all.
When this person could make one library to do something (like an ANSI-Colouring package), they would fractalise it into as many dependencies as possible, because that boosts their download count on NPM. I should note that this is just one person who has managed to nestle their way into some larger projects. I apologise for the spam, but this point really needs hammering home:
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-black
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-reset
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-bold
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-dim
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-italic
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-underline
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-inverse
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-hidden
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-strikethrough
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-black
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-red
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-green
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-yellow
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-blue
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-magenta
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-cyan
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-white
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-gray
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-grey
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-bgblack
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-bgred
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-bggreen
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-bgyellow
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-bgblue
https://github.com/jonschlinkert/ansi-bgmagenta
That might be true in aggregate, but the exceptions are exceptionally bad, impact a lot of people, and then fools try to rationalize the footgun on HN.
Because people love to bring up is-even as a reason why Node & NPM suck. What exactly did NPM do to create the is-even situation? (other than making it super easy to publish). What should they do differently?
The problem is Node and NPM grew at a greater rate than the rate it took to introduce someone to vendoring node_modules. Fast-forward a decade and it seems like people have forgotten all about vendoring and instead optimized for blindly shipping code warrantied for no purpose from the Internet.
The excuses why people don't vendor their packages are almost identical to the excuses people don't write tests for their code (i.e., time and velocity impact).
This isn't a technical problem, but a social one.
FTFY :)
I guess the interns have been very busy.
Quickly in these sorts of conversations, we're really just making fun of beginners for using dumb packages. With the popularity of Node, it makes sense to me that you can have beginners searching npm/google for how to tell if a number is odd, and for whatever reason they find is-odd or whatever.
And perhaps the idea of even collecting packages to do simple things is something fun for them. I remember having a weird maximalist attitude when I was a beginner using Rails. I'd install a Ruby gem and I could use it anywhere in my files without even importing it, usually a single line of abstraction. For some reason that appealed to me even though I could have done it myself. I think I had this idea that people writing libraries were doing things right, and I was right for tapping into them.
I think we should save our denigration for the serious, popular projects that use packages rather than the fact that beginners use them. Like, this sort of package has no business being a transitive dep of Express (it isn't) and popular Express middleware, and mainly because x-deps are security issues.
Mea culpa for the unsubstantiated assertion before.
"dependencies": { "is-number": "^6.0.0" },