I hate the fact that modern webdev has become to unnecessarily complex that developers unironically turn to LLMs instead of realising that it doesn't have to be like this.
Darkreader plus 150-200% zoom and you have something pretty usable on hidpi displays. You could always try making your own frontend for HN, it's pretty trivial :)
Writing for AI honestly doesn't seem much different to writing for pagerank algorithms which SEO specialists have been doing for years. The only change is that almost all the SEO content on the web is now being written by AI, for AI to later summarise.
Liability: "Something for which one is liable; an obligation, responsibility, or debt."
Third party dependencies absolutely are liabilities.
You are liable to vet them, inspect their licenses and keep them updated while ensuring that they continue working with your existing code.
This is not something package managers help you do.
Package managers like NPM make it trivial to skip these steps entirely.
What is being argued for, is a more thoughtful approach to handling third party dependencies. Or at the very least, the need for people to realise that there are costs associated with bringing third party dependencies into your codebase.
Its not splitting hairs at all.
Its more of an presumption on the part of a large number of readers, that the 2 points argued conflate to "Package manager suck, because third party dependencies suck and you should write everything from scratch instead".
> It's completely fair game to react to the provocation rather than the substance of the article itself.
Yeah, but its down right stupid to do so.
The title isn't even misleading or part of a Motte-and-bailey argument.
People just hear "Package Managers are Evil" and assume that the author means you shouldn't use third party dependencies. Which is NOT what's being argued.
But I guess you'd know that, if you read passed the title.
The Author isn't arguing for not using third party dependencies.
He's arguing for developers to be more conscious of the dependencies they use, by manually vetting and handling them. That screams "I've been down the package manager route and paid the price". Not inexperience.
This really strikes cord with me.
I chose early on in my carrier not to use frontend frameworks, precisely because of the added abstraction and inherent complexity they tend to bring to your codebase. Its been tough and limited my prospects significantly as a junior dev. But these days, I'm happy that I chose to steer clear of frameworks. As it really does give you a much more broad understanding of how the web platform works.
Tl;Dr for the juniors out there, learn React if you want a job. Learn javascript if you want a good job.