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TL;DR: A patent and trademark agent and NPM bullied an Open Source Dev, so the Dev deleted his code from NPM as is his right. The internet broke. NPM restored the code against the dev's wishes. Corpos win...as always.
I’d say the bigger issue was people live-linking to the files rather than downloading and using a version controlled copy they can control.
They don't teach about Configuration Management in web-dev bootcamp
They don’t teach about Configuration Management in web-dev bootcamp
Ha! Bullshit like configuration management, memory management, optimizing compilers, all obsolete technology! We don't need that anymore with modern web browsers now that every single computer ever is connected to the Internet, and now that we have AI to write code for us!!! JavaScript is the one true language!
(sarcasm)
I love how it broke React.
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Original article not via pocket: https://qz.com/646467/how-one-programmer-broke-the-internet-by-deleting-a-tiny-piece-of-code
It's the left-pad npm incident, it was a big news back than, it has its own section on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Npm#Dependency_chain_issues
I always reel in horror when projects have tiny, 'negligible to implement yourself' functions like these as dependencies. See also: is-even 🙄
Edit: is-even has a dependency on is-odd which has a dependency on is-number. 🤦♂️
I think is-odd is intentionally a reference to / satire of leftpad
At this point it’s just a joke. Is there a npm for console log? I’ll have to check.
JavaScript is a dangerous shitshow for this exact reason. Dependencies are a security and stability nightmare.
Eh, I'd say any language that offers a package repository is just as susceptible. I'm neither pro- nor anti- dependency, but I do always try to keep them to an absolute minimum regardless of what environment I'm working in. Sometimes it makes sense to not reinvent the wheel.
Yes, but other languages have exponentially fewer packages that install when you add something, making the attack vector smaller and easier to monitor.
The best way to fix this is for library authors to avoid installing as many sub-dependencies as possible (is-odd, being an obvious example). But that’s a fundamental culture problem.
This is why I only code in Assembly. /jk
I can't even...
Yes you can, just don't odd
11 lines of code shouldn't be a package.
you should see the "is_odd" package...
it's like, return (num%2)? true:false
People using this deserve that their code breaks. Absolutely ridiculous.
Neither this, nor the leftpad thing, nor this is-even “package” are things I would even think about for a second before just writing it on my own. I wouldn’t even consider those features (let alone packages to depend my code on!) but basic programming.
Problem is when you accidentally pull it in as a transitive dependency...
Yeah :( This also is why such nonsense “breaks the Internet” …
i just don't see how npm is letting this happen...
im going to write an npm module called "true" that just returns true...
… and that has 4 dependencies on it’s own!
at which point do you blame the language for not implementing it natively?
I mean, does any language implement is_odd() natively? Doesn't everyone implement modulus and pretty much assumes that you remember modulus from elementary and can infer that even numbers are those where x % 2 == 0.
Isn’t %2 already native?
(BTW this thing failed JavaScript so hard ECMA immediately included it in that year’s standard)
at which point do you blame the language for not implementing it natively?
Erm … What more native than number % 2 do you want to have it?
2.is_even()
(I don't know, if this is possible in JS.)
Let’s call the number variable just x, you then have literal math (Euclidean division) if you ignore === instead of = for equals.
x % 2 === 0
This can’t get better or more native than “just math”. This is the whole code you need to detect if a number is even. I wouldn’t even call it “code”.
If you remove whitespaces and ignore the type you end up with x%2==0 which is 6 characters long and a fully valid if clause. No magic involved, no abstraction, no weird function calls on integers …
I see that in modern JS this type of coding is a trend, but you can’t tell me you want to replace 6 characters with an own module or a package. :)
at 200k weekly downloads, i blame npm for allowing it...
https://www.npmjs.com/package/is-even
https://www.npmjs.com/package/undefined
What do you think about this package? 14,000 weekly downloads...
now i understand why people would call code "beautiful" and "elegant"
...
this here is a true work of art
I remember it live as it was happening. It was fun.
It's 11 lines of trash code too.
The way the function reallocates memory would bring your computer to a crawl on a large string.
Nice run on sentence in your title. Great job.
The only part of the story that I'm pissed at is NPM corporation restoring content on their server that they didn't own and published it to millions for profit.
Koçulu removed left pad. It was his code.
Can you imagine the lawsuits if when Disney pulled the license for Avengers on Netflix, Netflix responded with:
"Millions of customers got errors that Marvel Avengers is missing. So we put Avengers back on our servers."
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this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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