When I was checking out Serverless Framework I was floored that a single Lambda function (that barely did anything) resulted in 15+Mb of data being uploaded to AWS. I had only installed two NPM modules yet when I looked at the "node_modules" directory there were nearly 300 entries in there. Things like Redux and GraphQL, neither of which I ever intended to use in a simple test of Serverless Framework.
When Node and NPM first came out and I thought, while not perfect, they were a really promising set of technologies. Now, NPM specifically is something I will go out of my way to avoid. And by virtue of the fact that NPM is so closely tied with Node, I tend to avoid Node as well. Which sucks because I have always enjoyed programming in Javascript.
If anyone has come out with a curated alternative to NPM, please let me know.
Though I agree with the article, and can appreciate that somebody just "checking out Serverless" (I'm assuming you were also new to Node), it just takes a little bit of awareness when installing packages.
It took a while to learn this lesson, but it pm;u tales a few seconds in the process of deciding if you want to use a package, to check out it's dependencies, I also check out the git page and license. Is it active, is it open-source, does it have far too many dependencies, is it in regular use.
That's serverless. I was surprised to see it uses graphql as a default, and looking at graphql, how many dependencies does it have? Just one, which has no more. So that chain ends quite quickly.
It doesn't take long looking at the dependencies to see that the same packages get used again and again throughout the community. So you'll find you won't keep going down this path once you are comfortable with the packages.
Having said all of that, it is also good practice to look at the source of a package, and decide if you could do it better and easier yourself. It is amazing how many packages are only a few lines of code, and fairly unnecessary.
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When I was checking out Serverless Framework I was floored that a single Lambda function (that barely did anything) resulted in 15+Mb of data being uploaded to AWS. I had only installed two NPM modules yet when I looked at the "node_modules" directory there were nearly 300 entries in there. Things like Redux and GraphQL, neither of which I ever intended to use in a simple test of Serverless Framework.
When Node and NPM first came out and I thought, while not perfect, they were a really promising set of technologies. Now, NPM specifically is something I will go out of my way to avoid. And by virtue of the fact that NPM is so closely tied with Node, I tend to avoid Node as well. Which sucks because I have always enjoyed programming in Javascript.
If anyone has come out with a curated alternative to NPM, please let me know.
Though I agree with the article, and can appreciate that somebody just "checking out Serverless" (I'm assuming you were also new to Node), it just takes a little bit of awareness when installing packages.
It took a while to learn this lesson, but it pm;u tales a few seconds in the process of deciding if you want to use a package, to check out it's dependencies, I also check out the git page and license. Is it active, is it open-source, does it have far too many dependencies, is it in regular use.
https://www.npmjs.com/package/serverless
That's serverless. I was surprised to see it uses graphql as a default, and looking at graphql, how many dependencies does it have? Just one, which has no more. So that chain ends quite quickly.
It doesn't take long looking at the dependencies to see that the same packages get used again and again throughout the community. So you'll find you won't keep going down this path once you are comfortable with the packages.
Having said all of that, it is also good practice to look at the source of a package, and decide if you could do it better and easier yourself. It is amazing how many packages are only a few lines of code, and fairly unnecessary.