Comment by sodapopcan

12 hours ago

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.

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).

  • 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