NPM and Left-Pad: Have We Forgotten How to Program?

Post by xorcist » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 1:05 PM UTC

insin wrote: post #642

xorcist wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I want to know is how many systems does the author of is-positive-integer have implicit root access to? Sounds to me like publishing oneliners on NPM is a trivial way to build a botnet.

Seems like the answer is "none" by default, from https://docs.npmjs.com/misc/scripts#user > If npm was invoked with root privileges, then it will change the uid to the user account or uid specified by the user config, which defaults to nobody. Set the unsafe-perm flag to run scripts with root privileges.

Post by insin » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 1:10 PM UTC

jammycakes wrote: post #670

Here's a quick rule of thumb. If it's the kind of function you would ask a candidate to write at the start of a job interview, you shouldn't be importing a separate module to do it.

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 1:13 PM UTC

lewisl9029 wrote: post #206

runin2k1 wrote: post #7

Holy moly-- is-positive-integer/index.js: var passAll = require('101/pass-all') var isPositive = require('is-positive') var isInteger = require('is-integer') module.exports = passAll(isPositive, isInteger) I retract my previous statements that Javascript programmers are going down the same enterprise-y mess that Java programmers went down a decade ago. They've already taken it to an entirely different level of insani…

This comes up a lot when people discuss anything related to npm modules. It's easy to simply dismiss these trivial one-line modules as "insanity" and move on, but there's actually plenty of good reasons as to why many prefer to work with multiple small modules in this manner. This GitHub comment by Sindre Sorhus (author of over 600 modules on npm) is my favorite writeup on the topic: https://github.com/sindresorhus/a…

Post by toupeira » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 1:16 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #177

toupeira wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would I implement left-pad myself when there is already a well-tested implementation that I can install? You call 4 basic assertions "well-tested"? https://github.com/azer/left-pad/blob/master/test.js

a) I think that's a fine number of tests for a module this simple, which is itself an argument in favor of small modules. And I think it's four more assertions than anyone implementing this inline in a project would have. b) The details of this particular project are orthogonal to the philosophy of small modules generally. Whether or not this module is well implemented or well tested has no real relation to whether o…

Post by kbart » Thu, Mar 24, 2016, 1:23 PM UTC

z3t4 wrote: post #634

kbart wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libraries/modules should help to solve complex problems where writing your own version is not optimal. Single line functions as modules, on the other hand, won't help you compete with Google or Microsoft and result in more problems than they solve. If a simple padding or "is this int positive?" is a complex problem, well, there are different professions than programmer's..

The less code you write, the less code you have to maintain. Even if it's just one less thing, it's a win. The comonJS module pattern also helps tremendously, as your requires are block/function scoped. It makes it trivial to refactor (remove/rewrite) code.