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The fate of "small" open source

(nolanlawson.com)
295 points todsacerdoti | 3 comments | 16 Nov 25 19:21 UTC | HN request time: 0.609s | source
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Aperocky ◴[16 Nov 25 20:38 UTC] No.45948201[source]▶
> the era of small, low-value libraries like blob-util is over.

Thankfully (not against blob-util specifically because I've never intentionally used it), I wouldn't completely blame llms either since languages like Go never had this dependency hell.

npm is a security nightmare not just because of npm the package manager, because the culture of the language rewards behavior such as "left-pad".

Instead of writing endless utilities for other project to re-use, write actual working things instead - that's where the value/fun is.

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ncruces ◴[16 Nov 25 20:52 UTC] No.45948291[source]▶
But as Go puts it:

“A little copying is better than a little dependency.”

https://go-proverbs.github.io/

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threatofrain ◴[16 Nov 25 21:24 UTC] No.45948539[source]▶
Copying is just as much dependency, you just have to do maintenance through manual find-and-replace now.
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1. sodapopcan ◴[16 Nov 25 21:52 UTC] No.45948754[source]▶
Usually these types if things never change. I understand that all code is a liability, but npm takes this way too far. Many utility functions can be left untouched for many years if not forever.
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2. KPGv2 ◴[17 Nov 25 00:04 UTC] No.45949698[source]▶
It's not NPM. It's JS culture. I've done a lot of time programming in TypeScript, and it never fails that in JS programmer circles they are constantly talking about updating all their packages, completely befuddled why I'd be using some multiple year old version of a library in production, etc.

Meanwhile Java goes the other way: twenty-year old packages that are serious blockers to improved readability. Running Java that doesn't even support Option (or Maybe or whatever it's called in Java).

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3. llbbdd ◴[17 Nov 25 04:26 UTC] No.45950842[source]▶
Java writes to a bytecode spec that has failed to keep up with reality, to its detriment. Web development keeps up with an evolving spec pushed forward by compatibility with what users are actually using. This is "culture" only in the most distant, useless sense of the word. It is instead context, which welcomes it back into the world of just fucking developing software, no matter how grey-haired HN gets with rage while the world moves on.

EDIT: Obvious from the rest of your responses in this thread that this is trolling, leaving this up for posterity only