[AluminiumPoint]

there are many reasons while less code is better -- https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-best-code-is-no-code-at-al...

"very new line of code you willingly bring into the world is code that has to be debugged, code that has to be read and understood, code that has to be supported. Every time you write new code, you should do so reluctantly, under duress, because you completely exhausted all your other options. Code is only our enemy because there are so many of us programmers writing so damn much of it. If you can't get away with no code, the next best thing is to start with brevity."

More code, more bugs, more issues. 388 packages is ridiculous compared to practically every major system including operating systems. Javascript is Stockholm syndrome.

[nailer]

Using packages means less code, not more, since you're not rewriting the wheel every time.

[weiming]

Technically not if packages are just the misguided habit of "one package per function" seen in the Node ecosystem. Same amount of code, increased amount of complexity/meta-problems to deal with.

[nailer]

> Technically not if packages are just the misguided habit of "one package per function" seen in the Node ecosystem.

No. Using a package for a single function doesn't preclude code reuse.

Look at underscore.get package. You could write your own recursive key finder (which I have before), and so could every package author, and you'd have 10x the amount of implementations of a recursive key finder.

A single require of underscore.get by you and other authors means you have a single, well tested implementation with a million other users rather than 10 low quality ones.

[weiming]

Why not one package per line of code? One package per expression? Surely, someone will want to reuse var x = a + b.

   const {get} = require("underscore.get");

   get(obj, 'a[0].b', defaultValue);

If your language requires this [1] just to be able to subscript things without going bonkers, it may be time for a new language.

[1] https://github.com/NarHakobyan/underscore.get

[nailer]

> Why not one package per line of code?

Exactly. If it's a difficult line of code, with edge cases, requiring unit tests, etc. then sure. Algorithms are a great example of this.

Using your own example: how many badly written copies of https://github.com/NarHakobyan/underscore.get/blob/master/un... do you want?