my favorite thing about node projects is watching npm install dependencies, because occasionally you glimpse modern marvels, like this package

"15x less dependencies" is one of those things that should send anybody in their right mind screaming in horror and yet here it is pooped out onto the terminal

this just reminds me of how hopelessly, completely fucked up npm and its whole fucking infra is

package install counts are basically the new high scores, so obviously you make a bunch of modules that do literally one incredibly trivial thing, and then 30 copies of it

npm.jpeg

oh yeah this package requires another package, ansi-wrap.

like. i know i come off as angry internet screaming at cloud, but what the fuck is wrong with javascript developers. what is WRONG with these people.

also just in case you were curious there's ansi-wrap and wrap-ansi and they are by two different people and do two different things.

javascript development is creating a simple web form that asks for two numbers and spits out a list of numbers based on a simple, non-complex, trivial calculation, requiring two different server platforms, ten different languages, and 150 MB of dependencies .

javascript was a mistake

thinking about how a lot of modern programs are just a wad of javascript zipped up and stapled onto chrome and how god awful all of it is and feeling depressed

what if we developed a programming environment that has zero respect for user preferences, interface guidelines, common operating system hotkeys, usability, accessibility, standards,

what if we then made it so that every single application written in this came with its own copy of the program with minor differences, requiring that the already bloated memory footprint was only further increased because things like "standard gui libraries" no longer exist

remembering vs code's great new advancement in ui, allowing menu dropdowns to now be scrollable instead of just vanishing if they wouldn't fit in the window, something that (checks notes) windows 3.1 managed to figure out.

the future is now

because we're not capable of using the native os gui we have to reinvent it ourselves, making a copy that's very slightly off in subtle ways just enough that every time you try and do something that works in 98% of applications developed before 2005 you instead run into problems

in vs code you can't use left or right to navigate menus like this. you have to hit escape to get back to the top level and /then/ do it.

because it's not an actual menu. it's some fake bullshit made to look like a menu.