[skywal_l]

> A majority of the dependencies for modern frontend development are only used during development

This is important to note. I think we have to separate non-dev dependencies and dev dependencies. The attitude should be different. One is embedded in the product you deliver the other is only used locally to make the product. No one would say that we should start writing our C++ compiler by hand because "dependencies!".

I think this is an important strength of javascript: the tooling infrastructure. Its ability to embed everything you need into your package.json makes it so easy to start working on a project. I'm old enough to remember the weeks spent trying to get all the licenses, accounts created, software installed and configured in order to just start compiling a project.

This being said, we should also be careful about the tool we're using. If you want to use mustache with express, do not install the dependencies that link them together (mustache-express). Just write the 4 lines of code you need to adapt one to the other, so that you have a better understanding of what's going on and when something fails, you'll not be lost in a sea of unreadable JS code you didn't write.