react_demo$ du -sh node_modules/
    25M     node_modules/
    react_demo$ ls node_modules/|wc -l
    79
    react_demo$ cat $(find node_modules/ -type f ) | wc -l
    287767

I think I installed react, react-dom, browserify (globally), babel. The exact details are not really important, being inexperienced with react I probably installed stuff that is not strictly necessary. However, the ease of pulling in a huge amount of dependent code makes me concerned. For a long lived stable application you will have to maintain those dependencies (at a minimum, have 3rd party maintainers who you can trust to maintain it, not break your app, not inject security issues into your app, etc).

Have had the same experience tonight - browserify etc 12 modules, 75MB, circa 12,000 files. I guess it's just the npm way but it's definitely a bit shocking for those of us who are unfamiliar with it.

That's amazing. I had no idea things were so bad.

But are those strictly react dependencies? Seems more like a demo that was doing a lot more than just using react. Eg, browserify is mentioned, but that's a totally separate project from react, completely orthogonal. So inexperience seems like a big factor here..

It's the ecosystem that's being complained about here it seems, rather than react specifically.