It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (2015)

Re:It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (... by scambier on Sunday May 17, 2020 @02:54AM (#23210149)

Literally what it says: https://github.com/left-pad/left-pad/blob/master/index.js

Now if you ask "but why?", ultra-small packages like this are popular in JS because of the lack of a standard lib. Lots of devs prefer to install a dependency for each one-liner utility rather than write them themselves.

The only added value of those packages is that they're usually unit-tested against weird edge-cases that you might miss if you wrote them yourself.

Edit: related discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20223190

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Re:It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (... by TAForObvReasons on Sunday May 17, 2020 @03:07AM (#23210219)

the small libraries are best compared to stackoverflow code snippets. Instead of reading and copying a solution that may be out of date, you can use a (theoretically) tested solution that receives bug fixes. In many ways it is superior to the copy and paste of lore

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Re:It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (... by vxNsr on Sunday May 17, 2020 @12:07PM (#23212874)

You're misunderstanding, what is the use-case of that specific package? like I've never found myself needing to pad text on the left, just trying to understand why this was such an important package.

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Re:It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (... by zomglings on Sunday May 17, 2020 @01:07PM (#23213358)

Probably for command line tools that need to add some level of hierarchy into their output. You can add 1 to pad length and pass it to a subcomponent to display its output.

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Re:It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (... by scambier on Monday May 18, 2020 @03:07AM (#23219254)

I don't have any use for it either, but this package is not important by itself. It happens that this package is (was) at the very bottom of the dependency chain for some huge packages (like Babel, Webpack, popular frameworks, ...).

When its creator removed it, they literally destroyed the foundation of those popular packages. That's what made it suddenly important.

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Re:It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (... by chris_wot on Sunday May 17, 2020 @03:10AM (#23210232)

The smaller the library, the better.

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Re:It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (... by crehn on Sunday May 17, 2020 @03:18AM (#23210270)

The less there are dependencies, the better.

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