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

#1

Post by df07 » Wed, Mar 23, 2016, 10:33 PM UTC

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

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

#2

Post by Alex3917 » Wed, Mar 23, 2016, 10:45 PM UTC

So any developer could make this in five minutes, but for some reason they can't verify whether or not it works? That doesn't make sense.

In reality it could take an hour to get this working properly, but it does take only a couple minutes to verify that the solution here is correct. There are certainly good reasons for not adding extra dependencies to your project, but trading a known amount of time to check that an existing project does what you want for an unknown amount of time to redo it yourself is probably not a great bet.

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

#3

Post by mastazi » Wed, Mar 23, 2016, 10:47 PM UTC

Usually, dependency hell doesn't bite you, until it does. Try to rebuild that thousand-dependencies app in three years from now and you'll see ;-)

I recently had to rebuild a large RoR app from circa 2011 and it took me longer to solve dependencies issues than to familiarise myself with the code base.

Excessive dependencies are a huge anti-pattern and, in our respective developers communities, we should try to circulate the idea that, while it's silly to reinvent the wheel, it's even worse to add unnecessary dependencies.

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

#4

Post by tschellenbach » Wed, Mar 23, 2016, 10:48 PM UTC

In a way this shows what a great job NPM did at making it easy to publish packages. It's so easy that people decide to package up extremely easy functions.

As a python developer I would never publish a small package, simply due to the overhead of setting up a PIP package.

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

#5

Post by adambard » Wed, Mar 23, 2016, 10:49 PM UTC

I think it speaks to just how lacking the baseline Javascript standard library is. The libraries that come with node help, but all of this stuff seems like it should be built-in, or at least available in some sort of prelude-like standard addon library. The lack of either leads to all these (apparently ephemeral) dependencies for really simple functions like these.

That said, I work with Java, Clojure and Python mostly so I may be more used to having a huge standard library to lean on than is typical.

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

#6

Post by NathanKP » Wed, Mar 23, 2016, 10:50 PM UTC

I don't see anything wrong with using a pre-made left pad function. Why waste time and lines of code implementing something so trivial when there is already a solution available?

However, I agree it is ridiculous to have a dedicated module for that one function. For most nontrivial projects I just include lodash, which contains tons and tons of handy utility functions that save time and provide efficient, fast implementations of solutions for common tasks.

Lodash includes `padStart` by the way (https://lodash.com/docs#padStart).

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

#7

Post by runin2k1 » Wed, Mar 23, 2016, 10:52 PM UTC

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 insanity.

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

#8

Post by ocdtrekkie » Wed, Mar 23, 2016, 10:52 PM UTC

My current programming project, my goal has been to do as much in-app as possible. Does that mean I'm more likely to have bugs in my own code? Yes. But I've learned a ton doing it, and I know that my code doesn't have a giant monster of bloat hidden behind some random dependency somewhere. And yeah, that means when I wanted to handle email, I learned a heck of a lot about how programs handle email. Did it take more time? Yup. Education is time well spent.

I've got two dependencies besides the basic framework my project is built on: A scheduling engine, and a database interface. I eventually hope to factor out both.

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

#9

Post by buckbova » Wed, Mar 23, 2016, 10:52 PM UTC

Nearly everyone has had it drilled into them the "Don't reinvent the wheel." nonsense for better or worse.

I use lodash in almost every javascript project I start, big or small because it makes my life easier.

I'd rather use the lodash isArray than roll my own.

https://lodash.com/docs#isArray

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

#10

Post by jgrahamc » Wed, Mar 23, 2016, 10:53 PM UTC

What concerns me here is that so many packages took on a dependency for a simple left padding string function, rather than taking 2 minutes to write such a basic function themselves.

It takes more than two minutes. That little module has a test suite, if you're including it then you have some assurance it does what it says it does. If you write it you've got to worry about whether it works or not.