Comment by buttsack

When npm decided to have per-project node_modules (rather than shared like ruby and others) and human readable configs and library files I think the goal was to be a developer friendly and highly configurable, which it is. And package.json became a lot more than that as a result, it’s been a great system IMO.

Combined with a hackable IDE like Atom (Pulsar) made with the same tech it’s a pretty great dev exp for web devs