> What happens, however, when you decide to use multiple characters instead of a single character (to create a pattern for example)?
Then you can’t use left-pad, because it doesn’t support that and you don’t maintain it. So you make your own module to suit your needs, which is a very good thing and returns somewhat to the actual point, which is that anyone can make their own left-pad that matches the existing module, so the author’s wishes wouldn’t have a huge impact even if they were that the module stayed down, which they weren’t. Phew!
I think what's great about external modules is: * you only need to update the package file to get the benefits of new versions of dependencies * you can call `require('left-pad')` instead of what can end up like `require('../../utils/string').leftPad` * your code only describes _what_ it's doing, not _how_ (declarative programming)