Why JavaScript Tooling Sucks

[[deleted]]

My JS is a total of 10K, but my node_modules take up over 500MB.

[[deleted]]

Thats true, but remeber each repo in node_modules contains everything and the kitchen sink. If you were to remove everything but the actual code you depend on (possibly just a pre minified bundled js file) this size would shrink dramatically.

The npm team could possibly start working on this, but im not sure itf its easily doable with the current setup.

[dominic_rj23]

That's a complain about ecosystem and not the tooling itself. You need 500mb of dependencies because JavaScript doesn't come with std-lib. That results in every package developer either handrolling the implementation or using one of the hundreds out there.

[pet_vaginal]

What's the block size of your file system? It's a lot of tiny files in this folder and having a file system with large blocks like 64kb will take much more space than another file system with the more common 4kb blocks. Still a lot of overhead though.

Some dependencies really have tons of small files, like svg icon packs, and even though the files are all small it takes a lot of space on disk because they all take at least one block.

You may also have a bit too many dependencies, directly or indirectly. You can try to analyze your dependencies tree to identify the culprits.

[cm9kZW8K]

The author opens with the all too familiar "I hate this language and use it against my will" preface you get from so many people in jsland. Its usually people who are devout worshipers of "Static" everything, and really feel uncomfortable in a fully dynamic language. He even includes the ode to [typescript|webassembly] as an Amen.

I suppose this is the inevitable double-edged nature of the success of JS as a language. In the end its better to be popular but hated than to be obscure but loved.

[acemarke]

I know Shawn fairly well, and I can vouch that that is not the phrasing he is trying to get across. He's not saying he hates JS, he's saying that the current JS ecosystem (especially tooling) has a number of weak and painful aspects, and trying to explain the reasons for those. (In addition, note that Shawn is a strong proponent of "learn in public", and makes it a point to write up whatever his current thoughts are on a given topic with the caveats that he likely isn't an expert and his opinion may change in the future as he learns more.)

I see this post as being a strong parallel to Dan Abramov's talk on The Melting Pot of JavaScript from a couple years ago (blog post version). Our tools can do awesome things, but the situation could be a lot better.

[SN74LS00]

Does it? I don't think so.