What Happened When I Peeked Into My Node_Modules Directory | by Jordan Scales | Medium
T he left-pad fiasco shook the JavaScript community to its core when a rouge developer removed a popular module from npm, causing tens of projects to go dark. While code bloat continues to slow down our websites, drain our batteries, and make “npm install” slow for a few seconds, many developers like myself have decided to carefully audit the dependencies we bring into our projects. It’s time we as a community stand up and say enough is enough, this community belongs to all of us, not just a handful of JavaScript developers with great hair. Am I being paranoid? Maybe. Am I overestimating the hard work that goes into running an open source project? Most likely. Was I kicked off my ZogSports team because I “make sports less fun for everyone involved”? Yes. I decided to document my experiences in auditing my projects’ dependencies, and I hope you find the following information useful. Behind the fastest, leanest JavaScript web framework is a heaping pile of dependencies, each with their o