NPM & left-pad: Have We Forgotten How To Program?

[)roi(] · Mar 24, 2016

NPM & left-pad: Have We Forgotten How To Program?

http://www.haneycodes.net/npm-left-pad-have-we-forgotten-how-to-program/

Another example is NPM package isArray which has 880,000 downloads, 72 dependents, and is 1 line of code.

I'm personally not a fan of package heavy builds; been burnt far too often by badly change administrated packages.

halfmoonforever · Mar 24, 2016

I would rather take the few seconds a copy/paste would happen and build that into my general toolset, especially with something so simple it won't change much (if at all)

People reckon they are clever by using those as dependencies so that they don't have to maintain it or whatever. If something rarely/never changes, then why even bother with a dependency?

eternaloptimist · Mar 24, 2016

Azer came out as a douche in this ... IMO

[)roi(] · Mar 24, 2016

eternaloptimist said:
Azer came out as a douche in this ... IMO

Don't you find it more ridiculous that people needed to use this as a dependency? Surely when the stdlib is lacking you build your own.

Depending on someone else for such simple patterns is ridiculous IMO, it's not as if padding a string is difficult, or that any of the usual stdlib functions are.

semaphore · Mar 24, 2016

TJ was very guilty of this, he also released 10 line packages. That is why he was so prolific, so many time stupid packages. Obviously some of the larger ones were better.

halfmoonforever · Mar 24, 2016

eternaloptimist said:
Azer came out as a douche in this ... IMO

How so? He called a free, open source, readily available with no commercial strings attached program he wrote "kik", then got lawyers wanting to sue him because that's what their client is called?

Most likely kik was more popular than the company itself, so any google search for their company name would bring up his software instead. So they try to strong-arm him into removing or handing over his work to them because they claim the copyright to their name (and is probably way to ****ing lazy to do proper SEO to get their name ranking properly), and when he refuses (since he isn't making any money off of it at all), npm decides to GIVE THEM his code?

I would remove all my stuff off npm as well if that was the case.

The douche here is the laywers and npm

[)roi(];17321854 said:
Don't you find it more ridiculous that people needed to use this as a dependency? Surely when the stdlib is lacking you build your own.

Depending on someone else for such simple patterns is ridiculous IMO, it's not as if padding a string is difficult, or that any of the usual stdlib functions are.

True, but the mantra taught by so many other programmers is "why reinvent the wheel", and the poor juniors just do exactly that instead of considering the ramifications down the line

Sysem · Mar 24, 2016

We have a contender for left-pad's replacement:
http://left-pad.io/

_kabal_ · Mar 24, 2016

halfmoonforever said:
How so? He called a free, open source, readily available with no commercial strings attached program he wrote "kik", then got lawyers wanting to sue him because that's what their client is called?

Most likely kik was more popular than the company itself, so any google search for their company name would bring up his software instead. So they try to strong-arm him into removing or handing over his work to them because they claim the copyright to their name (and is probably way to ****ing lazy to do proper SEO to get their name ranking properly), and when he refuses (since he isn't making any money off of it at all), npm decides to GIVE THEM his code?

I would remove all my stuff off npm as well if that was the case.

The douche here is the laywers and npm

True, but the mantra taught by so many other programmers is "why reinvent the wheel", and the poor juniors just do exactly that instead of considering the ramifications down the line

no, they gave them the npm package name, for which they had registered trademarks around the world, including US and EU.

just because "open source" doesnt mean you can do anything with any name, etc

also not sure what your SEO comment is about. the first page of results when googling "kik" are all related to the actual app developed by kik.com

eternaloptimist · Mar 24, 2016

https://github.com/azer/left-pad/issues/4
could have warned people first, he messed up a lot of devs

https://medium.com/@azerbike/i-ve-just-liberated-my-modules-9045c06be67c#.72oopbk2j
he claims it wasn't a knee-jerk reaction. pulling all your modules with no warning?? the man knew what he was doing!

https://medium.com/@mproberts/a-dis...aking-of-the-internet-3d4d2a83aa4d#.wlewg0gqy
yes, the kik guys weren't polite...he defo could have handled this in a more mature way

question, would you have reacted in the same way?

[)roi(] · Mar 24, 2016

halfmoonforever said:
True, but the mantra taught by so many other programmers is "why reinvent the wheel", and the poor juniors just do exactly that instead of considering the ramifications down the line

I'd blame the idiots who taught the "poor juniors" to blindly copy/paste code.

FFS its not rocket science to package your own stdlib to avoid unintended regressions.

[)roi(] · Mar 24, 2016

Sysem said:
We have a contender for left-pad's replacement:
http://left-pad.io/

Why even bother? Just create your own stdlib.

[)roi(] · Mar 24, 2016

semaphore said:
TJ was very guilty of this, he also released 10 line packages. That is why he was so prolific, so many time stupid packages. Obviously some of the larger ones were better.

How does publishing code make someone guilty; surely the idiots are those who hinged the integrity of their project to code they don't control.

Sysem · Mar 24, 2016

[)roi(];17325592 said:
Why even bother? Just create your own stdlib.

That was meant as a joke

[)roi(] · Mar 24, 2016

Sysem said:
That was meant as a joke

Silly me.

[)roi(] · Mar 24, 2016

NPM & left-pad: Have We Forgotten How To Program?

I thought this couldn't get any more ridiculous:
http://left-pad.io

Less code is better code, leave the heavy lifting to `left-pad.io`, The String Experts.

## Can I buy an enterprise license?
Yes. Email root@left-pad.io with your account and ABA routing numbers.

WTF

[)roi(] · Mar 25, 2016

[)roi(] · Mar 25, 2016

Couldn't have said it better than this Go proverb "A little copying is better than a little dependency."
https://go-proverbs.github.io

Thor · Mar 25, 2016

I see this shiat happening to npm very soon

I am learning laravel now and when I did npm install I get a lot of warnings about depreciated shiat.

For instance gulp depends on glob-watcher which internally depends on graceful-fs 1.2.3. It complains about this all the time. It feels like there's going to be a crunch at some point

smb3 · Mar 25, 2016

I wonder if you can publish lots of little libraries under GPL/Custom Royalty licenses, then when a big organisatoin comes along and uses it ... you begin the litigation process

eternaloptimist · Mar 25, 2016

Thor187 said:
I see this shiat happening to npm very soon

I am learning laravel now and when I did npm install I get a lot of warnings about depreciated shiat.

For instance gulp depends on glob-watcher which internally depends on graceful-fs 1.2.3. It complains about this all the time. It feels like there's going to be a crunch at some point

but the problem is you are asking for those dependencies though ...
so you are probably using an old resource. check your package file.

NPM & left-pad: Have We Forgotten How To Program?

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