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The tragedy of running an old Node project

(abdisalan.com)
272 points abdisalan | 7 comments | 18 Nov 24 18:24 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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mvkel ◴[18 Nov 24 19:03 UTC] No.42175730[source]▶
> time to run it after not touching it for 4 years

> Two hours of my life gone...

Two hours of work after 4 years sounds ... perfectly acceptable?

And it would have run perfectly right away if the node version was specified, so a good learning, too

This feels like making a mountain out of a mole hill

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arp242 ◴[18 Nov 24 19:53 UTC] No.42176217[source]▶
Well, the "solution" ended up as "I gave up and just installed an old Node version and called it a day". So those 2 hours weren't even enough.

I've been using Jekyll/Ruby since 2014 for my website, with a few custom plugins I wrote myself. And I've never really needed to do anything like this. It "just works".

My Go and C programs are the same: "just works". I have some that are close to a decade old.

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1. Aeolun ◴[19 Nov 24 09:05 UTC] No.42181355[source]▶
Every single time I clone anything Go, I first spend a few hours sorting out dependency issues.
replies(1): >>42182509 #
2. segfaltnh ◴[19 Nov 24 12:01 UTC] No.42182509[source]▶
This shocks me, what sort of issues do you hit?
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3. fredrikholm ◴[19 Nov 24 12:42 UTC] No.42182797[source]▶
+1 on this. I've been using Go almost exclusively for the last 5 ish years partly because this sort of thing never happens.
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4. thrw42A8N ◴[19 Nov 24 13:55 UTC] No.42183442{3}[source]▶
You lucked into the period when they solved the issues. If you need to work with older projects and can't easily convert them, you're going to have a bad time.
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5. popcalc ◴[19 Nov 24 14:41 UTC] No.42183931{4}[source]▶
I open up random Go projects from a decade+ ago every week with no issues.
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6. thrw42A8N ◴[19 Nov 24 16:02 UTC] No.42184935{5}[source]▶
Lucky you, then. I open them every week too, but definitely not without issues.
7. Aeolun ◴[19 Nov 24 16:10 UTC] No.42185025[source]▶
Mainly weird issues of incompatible dependencies, maybe sometimes something that won’t compile because it’s missing a system dependency? I also feel like it sometimes pulls a newer or older dependency that is the missing some used module.