I thought it might be (mildly) interesting to keep track of how the npm node_modules folder grows over time. So I made this website. Source code: https://github.com/vnglst/size-of-npm/
It looks like the top 100 packages are stored in size/package.json? How do you calculate what the top 100 packages are and how do you update the package.json?
I find this post a bit ironic considering you built a 1.1 MB React app to display an image and a bit of text (and the image itself isn't even included in the repository).
I don't find it ironic anymore, I find it the state of affairs in modern development environments. I'm always surprised how quickly people jump to using massive scaffolding, systems, or systems of systems to accomplish things that need about two orders of magnitude less complexity.
Then again, it seems people that develop these monstrosities are never the ones to maintain them.
You're missing out the bug picture. All my projects started small. But day after day, you need a be feature and a new thing. It will grow. At that point you need to add these tools yourself, manually.
I rather have a standard baseline to be up to speed and don't get bothered with this on each app.
Is this a Freudian slip? The amount of bugs in "modern web apps" seems rather huge indeed.
> I rather have a standard baseline to be up to speed
To me, the baseline for any kind of website or web app is, you know, HTML. When authoring static HTML or rendering it dynamically on the server, I'm up to speed instantly.
Don't underestimate managers who "encourage" unnecessary complexity to boost their own profile. Their direct reports have to "design" and then implement and maintain them. Then the manager gets a higher profile for managing teams that build and design "critical", complex systems.
There is a lot of blame to go around in this industry--it isn't just individual engineers acting out of ignorance or resume building.