[dschooh]

This may not be the whole story, but one of the reasons is that JavaScript does not have a standard library. Corollaries are: several different module systems, application frameworks and bundlers exist.

[vlunkr]

I think that's a big part. The standard library isn't great, and progress is tied to browsers. Additionally, tiny packages became the norm early on. Is even, is odd, is negative zero, left pad, etc.

I don't know all the reasons for that, but I think part of it is that developers create them in order to put it on their resume. "My package is downloaded 500k times a week"

[lucideer]

Node does have a standard library.

I've seen this same weird line parroted by so many people in the comments here: it's very odd.

If you're talking about server & browser having different APIs that's equivalent to any other language having different platform apis.