The tragedy of running an old Node project

> 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

Other ecosystems usually do not have problems to the extent the author had.

I am deep in the Python ecosystem, and I love Python, but I have to admit that Python has the same issue. Reviving a medium-size project after 4 or more years usually means I have to catch up on a lot of new surprising deprecations. That's not because there's anything wrong with Python; it's more of an economic issue: the authors of active libraries have little or no economic incentive to support old, deprecated versions, so they just don't. That's life in the modern world. It is a deep problem that should theoretically affect every large software ecosystem because very few library authors can predict the future with great accuracy, and very few open source library authors have any significant incentive to support old ideas.

> I am deep in the Python ecosystem, and I love Python, but I have to admit that Python has the same issue.

The same problem in Python is much easier now because you can ask the uv resolver to limit itself to some earlier point in time.

You can do `uv pip install --editable . --exclude-newer=2022-01-01` and you will end up with a resolution from two years ago. Since uv can also install older python versions automatically you can easily bisect you to a newer point.