[Leonard_of_Q]

Internet is handy but not essential, there are other ways to communicate. Back to the BBS, flash drives tied to pigeon legs, packet radio, mesh radio networking, etc. Taking away npm and its ilk would after a relatively short adaptation period probably lead to increased code quality, reliability and safety. Those who wanted to keep on importing silly dependencies could still do so, they'd just have to do it manually using whatever alternative communication method replaced the aforementioned once-upon-an-internet. Taking away AWS (etc.) would not be much of a problem, you'd have to go back to self-hosting in co-lo facilities or just 'in the basement of a few branch offices'. Take away C# and there's a whole alphabet of languages to replace it.

A better comparison would be to suggest taking away contractors and consultants. Suddenly that supermarket owner would have to write his own software or hire someone to do it while before he could just tell some external agent (...) what he wanted to do - and change the requirements weekly, and forget to mention that one important task without which the system is useless, complain to the developers about it being missing upon delivery, eventually grudgingly agree that he did not mention it, pay more, wait another month or 2 for an updated revised version, etc.

Design and coding skills are like perishable goods, use 'm or loose 'm. Once they've been lost they need to be reacquired at substantial cost in time and effort. They also need to be kept up to date or they'll loose relevancy in <voice="marketroid"> today's fast-paced world </voice>.