Show HN: SuperUtilsPlus – A Modern Alternative to Lodash

[dhax_or]

Hey HN!

After years of wrestling with Lodash's quirks and bundle size issues, I decided to build something better. SuperUtilsPlus is my attempt at creating the utility library I wish existed.

What makes it different?

TypeScript-first approach: Unlike Lodash's retrofitted types, I built this from the ground up with TypeScript. The type inference actually works the way you'd expect it to.

Sensible defaults: Some of Lodash's decisions always bugged me. Like isObject([]) returning true - arrays aren't objects in my mental model. Or isNumber(NaN) being true when NaN literally stands for "Not a Number". I fixed these footguns.

Modern JavaScript: Built for ES2020+ with proper ESM support. No more weird CommonJS/ESM dance. Actually tree-shakable: You can import from specific modules (super-utils/array, super-utils/object) for optimal bundling. Your users will thank you.

The best parts IMO:

compactNil() - removes only null/undefined, leaves falsy values like 0 and false alone

differenceDeep() - array difference with deep equality (surprisingly useful)

Better random utilities with randomUUID() and randomString()

debounce() that actually works how you expect with proper leading/trailing options

Also genuinely curious - what are your biggest pain points with utility libraries? Did I miss any must-have functions?

[7bit]

> Like isObject([]) returning true - arrays aren't objects in my mental model.

Correct me if I am wrong, but Array factually are JS objects and "[] instanceof Object" is true.

Fair enough if that does not fit your mental model, but I would not use any library that treats facts like opinions.

[williamdclt]

I agree with the author that it’s almost never what you want. But I agree with you that it’s the reality of the platform, ignoring it will cause its own problems.

I’d surface the footgun rather than trying to pretend it’s not there: isNonArrayObject and isObjectOrArray, or something like that

[7bit]

Absolutely agree. I also hate that empty arrays are true, which is different from other languages. But I agree that it's better to face the reality of the language than create a function that evaluates [] to false. It trains you a bad habitnand some day that will cause you to introduce a bug.

[williamdclt]

> I also hate that empty arrays are true, which is different from other languages

I don’t mind that actually! I don’t think I have much use cases for “empty array is semantically different from non-empty”. Usually I find null/undefined are better choices, an empty array is just a normal array, I don’t expect it to be handled differently

[7bit]

What do you think about empty strings being falsy in most languages including js?

Null/undefined is a better choice, but there's many occasions where you do not have the power of choice. For example with document.querySelectorAll, which returns an empty array if nothing is found. The simple thing to do is to just check for it's length or just iterate over it's nodes, but still. I prefer empty arrays being falsy.

Just to clarify, I'm not saying one is better than the other. I just prefer how it works in other languages like Python. But I still would rather work with the JS language properties, than import a library that changes how I test for empty arrays.

[williamdclt]

> What do you think about empty strings being falsy in most languages including js?

I don’t love it! I think it’s inconsistent with empty arrays being truthy.

In practice, I see a lot more mishandling of empty strings than empty arrays (eg “!myvar” catching null and empty strings when it’s not what was meant) which hints that it’s not the right thing to do: an empty string is a valid string, whether its semantically different from non-empty entirely depends on the context and shouldn’t be baked into the langage.

Generally, I think implicit casts are not a great idea and I’d rather they didn’t exist (one of the few things I think Go got right).

> For example with document.querySelectorAll, which returns an empty array if nothing is found

Yes I think it’s doing the right thing. It’s indeed returning the list of elements, whether there’s 0 elements or more it’s still a valid list. As you say, you don’t usually need to handle it any differently from a non-empty array (just iterate), so I don’t think it should cast to a different value.

However if for example you were passing something like a whitelist as an argument, I’d expect [] to mean “there is a whitelist, allow only these items (ie allow nothing)” and null to mean “no whitelist, everything allowed”. These two things are semantically different, I think it makes sense to cast to different values.

I do see your point and it’s definitely at least partly a matter of taste. Again id rather there was no implicit conversion at all, removing the risk of mishandling altogether!

[nothrabannosir]

Akshually, implicitly casting any non Boolean type to true or false is no better than implicitly casting “0” to 0. :) B-)

[moritzwarhier]

Lodash also has "isPlainObject". Not sure if that's as performant as using Array.isArray or even simpler trickery (see below), but it seems that this fixes it.

"isObject" is just not well-defined for other cases that might be interesting, in my opinion. Not just "null" or arrays.

Functions can have properties (although they don't have the object prototype or primitive type).

Class instances behave differently compared to plain objects when used with libraries or other code that inspects the shape or prototype of objects, or wants to serialize them to JSON.

If you deal with unknown foreign values that are expected to be a JSON-serializable value, you could go with something like

  isObject = (o) => !!o && typeof o === "object" && !Array.isArray(o)

But it does not deal with all the non-JSON objects, e.g. Map or other class instances that are not even JSON-serializable by default.

When data comes from parsing unknown JSON, the check above should be enough.

In other cases, the program should already know what is being passed into a function. No matter if through discipline or with the aid of an additional type syntax.

For library code that needs to reflect on unknown data at runtime, I think it's worth looking at Vue2's hilarious solution, probably a very good and performant choice, no matter how icky it might look:

  https://github.com/vuejs/vue/blob/547a64e9b93d24ca5927f653710b5734fa909673/src/util/lang.js#L293

Since the string representations of built-ins have long ago become part of the spec, it seems that there is no real issue with this!

[dcsan]

your option is a bit more verbose but definitely more clear. confusing the underlying definitions of the language itself will lead to problems later.

[PUSH_AX]

Will it? Will it really?

I’ve been writing JS for so long I’ve forgotten all these language quirks, I feel like it’s fair for most people, these language choices are kind of meaningless in day to day, what’s meaningful is a function returning things that will make sense to most people. Or at least have two functions, languageStrictIsObject()

[williamdclt]

Yeah, in practice I would only encounter the case of arrays being objects when doing something highly polymorphic (eg reading some JSON that can be anything), which likely would have test cases for every type anyway.

But when I’m writing a reusable lib and I can’t perfectly abstract a gotcha, I design the API so that the dev _has_ to make an explicit decision rather than defaulting on their behalf (defaults are evil). So, isObjectOrArray and isObjectNonArray: you have to think about which applies. Another example is sorting: does it sort in-place or immutably? Make it explicit in the function name. Does a function expect a sorted array or will it sort itself? Make it explicit in the function name. And maybe provide both variants.

[dschuessler]

> any library that treats facts like opinions

The word 'object' has different meanings. One includes arrays and the other does not. They prefer the latter. You prefer the former. I don't think this has much to do with 'facts' and 'opinions', but rather with the practicality of choosing a certain way to speak.

I’d liken it to the word 'sorting'. JavaScript libraries sort in a certain way that is simple to implement. However, this is so different from what we typically mean by 'sorting' that people came up with natural sorting algorithms. Are these people treating facts like opinions on how to sort? I’d rather say, they acknowledge the relevance of a certain way to speak.

[bryanrasmussen]

libraries of this sort, especially in JavaScript, often exist to enforce a more reasonable mental model rather than the model baked into the language.

[7bit]

I understand that. I just don't think that it is a good habit. Instead of just learning the languages and it's quirks now you form a bad habit and start to rely on one dependency for all your projects.

[bryanrasmussen]

this is generally the view I have on these sorts of things as well, although I must admit that my views are often out of step with what everybody else I work with feel on the matter.

[ivanjermakov]

Distinction is tricky since you can use indexing on plain objects, e.g.

    const foo = {};
    foo[0] = "bar";

[rafram]

Right. For the purposes of standard library functions that operate on array-like objects,

  { length: 1, 0: "item" }

is an array.

[yoz-y]

What I’d like is a utility library like this, but instead of it being an actual library, be it some utility that generates a single file with exports of the few functions I need. Even just something that would make copy pasting them easier.

As in, I want actual zero dependencies, not even the library itself. The reason: I never want these to randomly update.

[acbart]

Couldn't you just pin a specific version dependency? My brain says there's some way to also pin to a hash, but that would require googling and I'm on mobile.

[mystifyingpoi]

Pinning is a good strategy (I'd say that it should be the default one), but depending on your level of paranoia (think left-pad), you might consider just downloading the lib as it is, and storing it in source control forever.

[graypegg]

I do sort of miss bower [0] for this reason. It was really just a way to download javascript and plunk it into your application. It was standard practice to check all of your vendor dependencies into SCM. [1] Of course a good chunk of it was transformed through something like Gulp or Grunt before being added to the bower repository so you were unlikely to maintain those once checked in, but there was still quite a few packages (small jquery image gallery plugins and the like) that were just some un-transformed javascript someone typed up and threw at bower verbatim.

[0] https://bower.io

[1] https://addyosmani.com/blog/checking-in-front-end-dependenci...

[nodewrangler]

The problem is that even if you pin to a version, at some point you’ll need to update node, typescript, or some other package, and then if this package doesn’t update, then you may have to migrate from it to something else. While js tries to enforce backwards compatibility, and npm, etc. help with the complex landscape, in practice with node, typescript, etc., even with LLMs helping, it can be a pita and hours or days of work to update at times. It’s just not worth it for things you could’ve just implemented yourself. There are exceptions to this, though.

[mystifyingpoi]

> at some point you’ll need to update node, typescript, or some other package

I experienced both sides of this discussion (project that always pulled :latest disregarding any kind of versioning, and project that had node_modules commited inside the repo) and both extremes suck, but I lean towards the second one. I'll totally take a few days of pain over not knowing whether prod will work today or not.

[hinkley]

This is why running your own mirror is what most large companies do. Guarantee no take-backs.

[fsloth]

Nobody wants anything _ever_ to ”randomly update”. Why this is the default setting on so many development setups boggles my mind.

I really havent figured out why professional systems insist running on the bleeding edge - it’s your feet are bleeding here I believe. 10 year … 15 year old code is generally excellent if you know it through and thorough.

[chrisweekly]

CVEs are a thing. If vulnerabilities are discovered in your dependency graph, choosing to ignore them can have severe consequences.

[fsloth]

I don’t believe anything I wrote above promotes the idea of ignoring vulnerabilities as a standard procedure.

CVE database is an excellent way to be informed about vulnerabilities and there are services to automatically map CVE reports to code bases.

[chrisweekly]

Ok, but the context for the conversation is external dependencies, and you expressed a preference for code aged 10-15 years. I'm just saying that a codebase that's 10-15 years old, with any dependencies at all, is going to be rife with vulnerabilities. Thus the choice is either staying current or living with vulnerabilities.

What's the alternative? Are you suggesting that backpatching transitive deps dating back over a decade-plus tineframe is a viable maintenance strategy?

[fsloth]

I'm suggesting the "default mode" would be that updating is explicit rather than automatic.

The "10-15" year old comment can be taken in the context of language specifications for example. C++11 is a totally fine language standard, and since backward compatibility is the only reason for C++ to exist at this point there is no intrinsic benefit in using a later version.

[skydhash]

As my experience grows, I'm getting fonder of stances like Debian or Common Lisp, which favors stability. Once you've solved a problem, it's not fun having your foundation morphs under you for no other reasons than bundling features and security updates.

[parentheses]

OOC, what is the benefit of having a "library" that requires such manual labor to maintain and upgrade?

You'd miss out on CVEs because you don't use the common dependency paradigm.

You'd also miss out on bug fixes if you are not detecting the bug itself.

Help me understand because I'm with you on less dependencies but this does feel a bit extreme.

[hofrogs]

Why would small functions like "difference", "groupBy", "flatten", etc. have CVEs and require bug fixes? Implementing those correctly is a one and done thing

[jsheard]

You'd be surprised: https://positive.security/blog/lodash-ramda-underscore-vulne...

[hofrogs]

Looks like these are mostly based on "reserved" attributes (with double underscores that have no special meaning in the language, just make unintentional collisions less likely), a modern solution utilizing JS Symbol type (where needed) would have no such issues

[programmarchy]

shadcn distribution model for utils is a good idea. i wanted something for react hooks as well and was surprised that didn’t seem to exist either.

[michaelsbradley]

Why not copy & paste the code you need into a vendor/ subdir?

If the vendored code needs to be updated because of a change in your build tools or whatever then you’ll likely be making similar changes to other parts of your project.

[yoz-y]

This is the approach I'm sometimes using, but it would be nice to have tooling around that :)

[_1tan]

We use es-toolkit to replace Lodash - how would you compare your library?

We just migrated a React app with around 500k LOC and this worked quite well and flawless.

[dhax_or]

I've not used es-toolkit but from what I see you get lower bundle size, typescript support and a better performance with our library. I will be releasing the the benchmark soon enough so do watch the repository if you can

[uwemaurer]

I use es-toolkit. It is fully in Typescript. Every function can be imported without any extra overhead, for simple functions it just adds a few bytes then to the bundle. I doubt "better performance" since most helpers functions are just tiny and there is no room for significant improvements.

So I think trying to be better here is pointless, better focus on offering more helpful utility functions which might be missing in es-toolkit

[dannyfritz07]

I don't think we've really seen many successors to LoDash other than Ramda because the platform now has many of Underscore's functions built in.

[gaaaaaaaarf]

Nice work! Reminds me of https://github.com/angus-c/just

Suggestion: add more tests and run some benchmarks

[dhax_or]

Thanks for this! I've already started adding more tests. I ran some benchmarks and they were really impressive. I will get it out in the next release

[addandsubtract]

Not to be confused with the other Just: https://microsoft.github.io/just/

[latchkey]

Or this https://github.com/casey/just

[meeech]

don't discount the value of a good docs site. that was one of things i loved about lodash that made it so easy to use, and to discover all the functionality it offered. So if you looking to replace it, would be good to have similar docs.

[thih9]

About pain points / feature requests:

Is there an idiomatic way to duplicate a hash while replacing one of its values, preferably something that supports nesting?

Whenever I work with react and immutable structures, this comes up and I hack something simple.

I don’t do FE on a regular basis though so my perspective may be skewed.

[sethaurus]

These days that's pretty well-supported in the base language:

    const updated = { ...existing, someKey: someNewValue };

You mention nesting. That starts to look messier:

    const updated = { ...existing, someKey: { ...existing.someKey, ...someNewValue } };

There's a whole cottage industry of little libraries to make this ergonomic/fast in the general case (copying immutable objects with nested changes). `immer` is a popular choice. But the reality is that it gets complicated to do this generically; in my view it's usually better to just use the base language where possible, even if it means sprouting some util functions for the various kinds of updates you end up doing.

[antifa]

There might be a function called produce in one of your immutable/react lib.

[rco8786]

I wonder why the authors decided to make `flatten` only go one level deep, and have `flattenDeep` that goes N levels. AFAIK most other implementations of Array.flatten do it recursively through however many levels exist.

[insin]

The published version appears to be CommonJS only:

    $ node index.mjs
    import { isString } from 'super-utils-plus'
             ^^^^^^^^
    SyntaxError: Named export 'isString' not found. The requested module 'super-utils-plus' is 
    a CommonJS module, which may not support all module.exports as named exports.

You might also need to update some of your type checks to handle wrapper objects like new String() - Object.prototype.toString.call(...) is your friend.

[rafram]

> You might also need to update some of your type checks to handle wrapper objects like new String()

There’s genuinely never a reason to use new String(). You should treat non-primitive String instances as bugs.

[the_sleaze_]

Can you explain a little? I've never heard this.

[deadcoder0904]

https://radashi.js.org/ is also a good alternative

[jokull]

I recommend https://remedajs.com/ - they're always making the types more accurate too. Like groupby has nonempty lists.

[gcmeplz]

The types look great on remeda, but one thing that looks intriguing about SuperUtilsPlus is the focus on being tree-shakeable. Lodash's lack of tree-shake-ability is a drawback to using lodash on the frontend.

edit: the types on remeda look great though! If I were doing a backend-only NodeJS project, I'd be super tempted to test it out.

[bythreads]

Just import what you use for lodash?, the theres not need for a treeshake situation?

[redslazer]

We migrated to remeda from Lodash and are pretty happy. https://remedajs.com/

What do you do differently?

[cronelius]

I made twitter post 3 or 4 years ago making fun of Lodash team for _still_ not shipping loadash 5 and they didn't like it very much. They started working on Lodash 5 in like 2015 and it still hasn't shipped. Guess we make our own now

[ryancnelson]

Biggest pain point: wtf is lodash? I don’t care if it’s in your readme, but maybe tell us in your HN hype post

[AstroBen]

Anyone who doesn't know what lodash is wouldn't be interested in this. It's expected knowledge for the target audience

[cronelius]

lodash is extremely common knowledge in the js/web world. you’re asking a chemist to explain atoms before sharing their big discovery

[ryancnelson]

No I’m asking a commercial that pops up in what I’m watching and says “ask your doctor if ciallis is right for you.” and gives no context but someone washing their tesla.

[podgietaru]

I don’t know. Maybe if it’s getting a lot of traction it’s beholden on you to look up what it is.

I don’t understand everything on the HN frontpage either.

[robinson7d]

Do the example functions (isObject, isNumber, differenceDeep, randomUUID, debounce), along with the name (“SuperUtilsPlus”), and sentences saying “utility library” and “JavaScript” really not give enough context to get an idea of what this library is for?

And so if Lodash is what they’re trying to replace, is that not enough info to infer what Lodash might be?

The pharma ad comparison seems more than a little hyperbolic to me.

[nativeit]

I dunno about anyone else, but someone washing their Tesla fits my mental model of impotence perfectly.

[epolanski]

To use your analogy, this is more of "Show HN: Cialis - A modern alternative to Viagra".

You either care about Viagra and read or move on.

[ryancnelson]

the irksome bit was this: lodash's page, first sentence, says "A modern JavaScript utility library delivering modularity, performance & extras."

this github's readme says "alternative to lodash". other than being named "superutilsplus", someone who clicked on it would need to then go google for lodash to see it's another js utilities kit, to then figure out they don't care.

I stopped professional javascript development when i stopped having an office next to Ryan Dahl at Joyent, so, yeah i haven't cared for about a decade. Thanks for explaining about atoms, though, my esteemed chemists.

[cronelius]

HN is not a feed of pharmaceutical ads. HN is a place where industry experts in many industries exchange projects and news in _their_ language. HN is going to be a difficult place to live if you are unwilling to google or chatgpt for things you don't understand. Most of us are here explicitly to discover things we've never seen before – there are other places on the web to have everything spelled out

[rgreek42]

Weird comment