One programmer broke the internet by deleting left-pad (2016)

Re:One programmer broke the internet by deleting left-pad (2... by tinco on Monday September 06, 2021 @04:30AM (#28431637)

If you have to depend on Node.JS to run your service, it's a red flag. Still I'm seriously considering Node.JS for every backend project we start, just because it's so much easier to hire for, and the ecosystem is so healthy. We're living in a red flag time for software development.

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Re:One programmer broke the internet by deleting left-pad (2... by quonn on Monday September 06, 2021 @04:52AM (#28431732)

There‘s nothing wrong with NodeJS in principle, especially when combined with TypeScript. Can you point to something specific?

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Re:One programmer broke the internet by deleting left-pad (2... by georgyo on Monday September 06, 2021 @05:14AM (#28431836)

For me personally, the fact that even a simple node project will have well over 1000 dependencies is a problem. Slightly more complex projects will have more than 10k dependencies.

Auditing is nearly impossible.

The complete lack of a standard stdlib means always relying on community packages.

Also, not a complaint directly against node directly, but for the ecosystem and developers. There is not a culture of compatibility, further fueled by the fact that multiple versions of the same dependency can be included in the same code base by different dependencies.

Coming from any other language were it is a goal to keep external dependencies down, nodejs is nightmare fuel.

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Re:One programmer broke the internet by deleting left-pad (2... by michaelt on Monday September 06, 2021 @05:15AM (#28431845)

Many people judge programming languages as not just the language, but also the tools, library, community, conventions and so on.

After all, if I love Java but hate AbstractSingletonProxyFactoryBeans, I'm probably going to hate being a professional Java developer.

Some would see the left-pad incident not as an isolated oddity, but as representative of the entire NodeJS ecosystem - showing a weak standard library, a culture of pulling random, unaudited code from the internet, and rats-nest dependencies.

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Re:One programmer broke the internet by deleting left-pad (2... by xupybd on Monday September 06, 2021 @04:32AM (#28431646)

Isn't Go starting to gain popularity without the downside of Node?

I'm saying this as someone that hasn't used either.

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