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Comment by junon

4 hours ago

I feel like I have to remind people of this quite often, but the history is such that npm was lightweight at one point, bundling wasn't a thing, and while `isodd`/`iseven` are of course silly, things like `isarray` were not functions that existed back then (we didn't have Array.isArray). `typeof [] === 'object'` in JS, so e.g. my package `is-arrayish` checked for a similar structure to an array (whereas Id guess `isarray` checked for the prototype). `isarray` failed for the `arguments` keyword, which was needed for variadics before argument spreads were added to the language I believe in ES5.

So of course they don't make sense now. But they were created for a reason. Before even Markov chains were a fad - let alone LLMs - we were trying to be as efficient as possible and maximize code reuse I stead of writing the same helper functions over and over again. That's what you're seeing.

I hate to bring politics into such discussions, but this thought struck me as funny.

The hubris of humanity... what you're describing is akin to the US Constitution and the Founding Father's goals, ending in Donald Trump.

Node is the same horror.

Nice ideas, great premise, and all turned to garbage in the end.

  • "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions". Still true, probably thousands of years after the sentence was coined.

  • I think a lot of things end up that way, just at different timescales. Best we can do is learn from them and start again, IMO - however that looks.