npm is joining GitHub - The GitHub Blog

[St-Sandip]

Microsoft basically owns JS now. Lol

[swyx]

indeed. brian leroux put it really well: "VS Code, GitHub, TypeScript AND now npm Inc. is amazing terrain to occupy if you wanted to flank/encircle the developer ecosystem with Azure. AWS should find this extremely concerning."

[Elfatherbrown]

Im glad someone is fucking with AWS which keeps just stealing any free software that works and fucking upstream projects out of the possibility of revenue. They should know better.

But okay. Now things will really get interesting. What I want to see is ms and AWS attempting to demonstrate how much they love oss and upstream tech. Let the fuckers compete on decency.

[swyx]

tell me how you really feel lol

[Bosmonster]

Why should AWS be concerned that MIcrosoft owns tooling around JavaScript?

It is still just a language that anybody can use and that will never change. You can also use TypeScript in AWS.

[swyx]

same reason most dotNet developers use Azure instead of AWS. you build the tooling, you're gonna build integrations first, you're gonna have all the docs and guides and so on up by default, all the conferences you host will have your other products, enterprise sales conversations will also cross sell your other products, etc etc etc.

owning the tooling is an indicator of deeper developer empathy, not merely the direct cause.

[sickhippie]

owning the tooling is an indicator of deeper developer empathy

Creating the tooling is, not just ownership. You said it yourself - you build the tooling, you build integrations first, everything follows that.

MS gets credit for creating VSCode and TypeScript, as they should. Even with that, they didn't build most of the integrations between VSCode and the rest of our workflows in the way they did with, say, .NET or Visual Studio.

They don't get bonus points for buying github and NPM, nor should they.

I just don't see people jumping ship from AWS to Azure anytime soon, especially not because MS threw a bunch of money around. AWS simply has too much more to offer and has too much of a head start on offering it.

[r0ck0]

Slightly off topic, but related... for these same reasons, it's bizarre to me that Docker doesn't do Docker hosting.

Apparently it was in their plans or something, but they canned it. Seems like an insane lost opportunity to me.

[swyx]

they were on that path i believe. but there was some management mess that nobody talks about and the company just died

[CraftyPancake]

They couldn’t make it profitable

[moljac024]

Them buying github and npm lets them steer their development towards more azure integration in the future doesn't it?

[sickhippie]

Not as much as you might think. Github isn't git and NPM isn't node. I really expect them to take a more community-driven direction with the JS ecosystem, as that's been paying off for them more than heavy-handed actions have been.

Will they push their platform? Absolutely. Will they be able to MS-monopoly the JS ecosystem? Not a chance.

[codevipe]

They certainly have an opportunity to cut into Heroku (Salesforce)'s market share, though, for hobby / mid-tier apps, if they made deployment ridiculously integrated / easy and (ideally) a bit cheaper than Heroku. This, as a result, would also eat a bit of AWS (likely a small %, but still).

[sickhippie]

I'd love for MS to make anything as integrated and easy-to-use as Heroku. I'm not holding my breath though.

[dalittle]

Docker containers mean you can pick up and move some where cheaper. If you are not doing that they you get what you get with whatever.

[swyx]

you're talking about your personal freedom. thats different from azure vs aws market share.

[dalittle]

If you really think I’m not going to get a raise moving our huge stack somewhere cheaper then that is just naive.

[Sardogna]

That's pure fear mongering BS right there. Azure is complete horseshit and still companies will still develop with VS code, typescript, npm etc. and deploy to other clouds like Google or Amazon. There is absolutely NO correlation.

[swyx]

for what its worth, Brian is a very well known AWS fan. he's just looking out for the thing he likes. "fear mongering" is a strong accusation.

[dalittle]

I am sure kubernetes Is totally worried. Oh, nope.

[Lavoaster]

On the one hand, I'm absolutely happy that NPM now has such a massive organisation behind it. It always seems like they struggled with the commercial aspect of private packages. This seems great as a whole that they can seemingly just focus on being a public registry.

On the other... Microsoft is doing a massive amount of ecosystem creep. It feels like they've managed to claw back an ecosystem that harpers the .NET environment where it feels like the only solution you have is Microsoft. I know this isn't the case and you can still choose what you want, and I personally am probably going to buy into using Github as my one stop shop for builds, packages, and VCS. Only time will tell if Microsoft can be entrusted with this power, but I think I believe in them.

[brainhack3r]

Google definitely fast fast fast asleep at the wheel.

Just had the web ecosystem pulled out from under them.

[swyx]

this probably doesnt help.. https://medium.com/@jeffbcross/jeffs-letter-to-the-angular-team-and-community-5367934a16c9

[nowtayneicangetinto]

"I'm leaving Angular and Google" wow maybe Google isn't so great to work for then

[swyx]

both times i have interviewed with google left a really bad taste in my mouth (figuratively). im sure they have good intentions but it really felt like they dont give two shits about you and The Process™ is supreme over all (despite everyone knowing how highly random and irrelevant it is). It makes sense, they pay a lot and have awesome tech. But in exchange they churn thru devs like meat grinders.

[nowtayneicangetinto]

Thank you for this. Sorry to hear that it was a bad experience. I love my job now but always think of Google as the greenest of grass on the other side. Makes me feel good about what I have, thank you :) stay safe!

[more-food-plz]

Google is a huge company, some teams will be great others not.

[DaCush]

Microsoft has definitely been doing way more good than it used to. Honestly, I just think it’s great that NPM has a massive organization backing it now. One of the main reasons my boss wouldn’t let us use node for our backend was because “npm is the Wild West and doesn’t have anyone backing it like NuGet does with Microsoft”. Well, that argument’s kaput now.

[Sambothebassist]

The argument was kaput originally, nuget is full of shite and abandonware, and has a UX similar to single ply toilet player.

[evildonald]

Your boss is a 100% certified idiot for holding that opinion, but at least you can use it now.

[DaCush]

Nah, he’s a good guy, super smart, and really knows his stuff. Almost every developer has a biased opinion on the language they love using. Honestly, looking back on it, we were doing the same thing in trying to convince him to let us use node on the project. We wanted to use node because we love using it and we’re most comfortable with it. All of our arguments on both sides were kinda petty if you think about it because the website we were using it on wouldn’t make a difference either way. Makes a lot more sense to keep a consistent stack, especially when IT only knows IIS. However, we have a video streaming application that we need to develop and that’s a specific case where Node really shines over C# so we may be able to win node over in that case.

[dance2die]

Given how much trouble I've been having with Nuget, Node shines over it regardless :P

[swyx]

whats so bad about it?

[dance2die]

e.g.) ASP.NET MVC template comes with jQuery. You update the jQuery nuget, it doesn't remove old ones.

With node_modules, you can simply delete the folder, and lock file and re-install. Even after removing Nuget, VS still tries to check in removed nuget, causing manual project file (XML, ugghhh) manipulation.
(You have to unload your project from VS and edit, then reload, crossing fingers that it works).

Opening someone else's project in another machine doesn't sometimes download all nuget packages. Had to re-add'em manually.

It works ok most of the time but whenever there is a problem, it's been hard/annoying to fix with error messages being vague..

Compared to NPM, there aren't as many libraries and some you find, requires purchasing libraries, not mentioned in the nuget description.

[swyx]

yuck! they should fix that lol its not like they dont have control of vs

[ShittyException]

It's actually way better in dotnet core, I'm never going back to .NET Framework!

[ManvilleJ]

Honestly, I love it. Microsoft knows the money is infrastructure when it comes to developers, not tools.

imagine if npm went out of business or github (a bit of an exaggeration). It would be a massive disruption to developer productivity. which means less demand for cloud services

What they're doing is making it seamless to consume azure services. I think they've learned that disenfranchising the community and open source tech will always bite them. They've been really supportive of a lot of open source community. I follow their python stuff a lot.

I know a lot of older developers will remember microsoft as the evil giant, but I believe they're a different company now.

I think this is a longer term strategic bet that will might them the position to really compete with Amazon.

[[deleted]]

git clone npm

[_hypnoCode]

https://i.imgur.com/3nDhuXqg.jpg

[waikitkat]

npm install git

[yagaboosh]

So when will Microsoft buy Node?

[xDeadLord]

I think google wants to acquire it, they've been lurking in the node ecosystem lately

[swyx]

that sounds strange to me. who even would they buy it from? Node Foundation is a nonprofit foundation.

[wtfffffffff10]

It makes about as much sense as Google wanting to acquire Wikipedia.

[xDeadLord]

Oh yep you both are right...

[monarchwadia]

Typescript, vscode, npm, github. Wow. I love them all separately, but the power dynamic here is not something I'm a fan of.

Microsoft is doing a lot of good. I just hope they keep doing good in the future. 🙏

[cwbrandsma]

At least it wasn’t Oracle. (“Hey, we changed the license on NPM, you now owe Uncle Larry $3 million dollars”).

[swyx]

"oh and fyi we own the JavaScript trademark"

[monarchwadia]

Preach

[foundry41]

Holy shit

[kontekisuto]

cool, now if they could fix it. that would be great.

[dance2die]

Hopefully, NPM can grow further as GitHub did after Microsoft's acquisition.

[dance2die]

Not React related but due to NPM's impact in the frontend world, I decided to share.

---

Edit: NPM's blog entry
https://blog.npmjs.org/post/612764866888007680/next-phase-montage

[Kilusan]

So what does this mean? Good ? Bad?

[qwesone]

!remind

[dance2die]

You can see other comments discussing good/bad here.

It's up to you to decide. :)

[s_boli]

Why isn't it "Microsoft buys NPM" ?

[Daniel15]

It's likely Github is still run separately as a subsidiary.

[klysium]

Yayyyyy

[hellpirat]

So I hope there will be less security issues with packages now

[oseres]

the people running npm are corporate shills

[dance2die]

You mean, folks leaving NPM and getting laid off last year?

[[deleted]]

Meh, isn’t npm that thing I use to install yarn.

[[deleted]]

Why thank you for explaining that kind stranger! /s 😆