How one developer just broke Node, Babel and thousands of projects in 11 lines of JavaScript

Time Zones vs. Left Pad

Tom Scott offers YouTube advice about time zones, 'use a library'.

But padding a string? Seriously? Any rational coder would do that inline, and far more cleverly.

Right what do we call this shit messaging app?

"Oooooo... how about KiK."

"Sounds Kool. Where'd the name come from."

"Oh its that Left Pad Function I've use all over the place."

"Bastard. Infringing on our TradeMark. Send the lawyers in."

Open Source Software??

I naively thought the whole point of OSS was that the developer(s) couldn't one day just throw a wobbler and tell you that you couldn't use the code anymore. Or suddenly decide to charge you loads of money. Not, of course, mentioning any names such as Microsoft.

As far as I can see this developer has had a spat with the firm hosting the code, and made it very public by pulling all his code from the repository. Obviously effective from the article here.

Just needs someone else to pick up the code and re-publish.

As already commented, hopefully this will make developers think a bit more about where their code comes from. Then again this does make for very Agile coding.

sometime, is better don't know, what code is behind your libraries :D :D :D

... what a $hit of code!!,

that's really how people use to write code in Node ¿?

Proof

This is just more evidence for why web developers are not considered real programmers. AC because my boss used to be a web developer (he is not even that good anymore).

NPM pushed the panic button

...and I think they'll take a hammering for this. Seems to me that Kik deserves to go down the pan also.

I'm no expert, but if author pulled all his code and then NPM republished it without permission, is this not copyright infringement of some sort and anybody that hooks in to the code is an accessory ?

KIK Germany

There is a company in Germany called KIK (kik.de). They have nothing to do with software but I am pretty sure that they have been operating for a long time, maybe somebody should tell them that they could sue the kik.com bunch.

My reaction -- "WTF"

This piece of code is a trivial function that I'd use as part of a standard library package, its not some kind of carefully crafted software component.

Is this what programming has degenerated into? A random collection of source code fragments, each owned and guarded by some individual (or, worse, some corporation)? Doesn't this show the inherent weakness in relying on distributed script fragments for a code distribution? Doesn't it highlight what a mess Javascript is -- its worse than BASIC because at least BASIC doesn't have pretensions towards being a properly structured language.

No additional comments.

"JavaScript is a trademark of Oracle Corporation."

lazy J.S. code authors created this problem

this problem was created by lazy J.S. code authors.

Think about it: how hard _IS_ it to write your OWN 'left script' function? Well, if you KNOW how to CODE, it's trivial.

But you see all of these javascript 'things' out there depending on other 'things', which depend on other 'things', apparently TRIVIAL things, because nobody knows how to CODE any more [except for a handful of 'thing' authors].

Everyone ELSE is just chaining up a bunch of 3rd party schtuff into an "app" and calling THAT 'coding'.

This has grown into a kind of 'DLL Hell' for Javascript. Personally, I'm *GLAD* to see this happen, because I'm *SICK* and *TIRED* of the *ABUSE* of scripting on the web.

For safety, I surf with the NoScript plugin BLOCKING it, unless I see some compelling reason to ENABLE scripting, and on a site by site basis. Example, I have to enable SOME of the scripting [and temporarily unblock cookies] to post HERE.

As a result, my pathetic-bandwidth connection isn't hauling gigabytes of CRUFT behind every web site I visit, with that CRUFT being MOSTLY due to embedded TRACKING and ADS anyway. (who wants THAT downloaded, especially if it causes 'overages' in your bandwidth cap)

CDN's are equally *EVIL*, like enablers of script addicts. It's hard to say WHAT gets enabled if you unblock one of them.

Often it makes a *LOT* more sense to host the script YOURSELF, on YOUR web server, and maintain it YOURSELF, and trim out everything you DO NOT NEED, instead of relying on CDNs to refresh that MONOLITHIC MONSTROSITY library every time someone adds a comment or changes spelling in some text thing, forcing *THE* *WORLD* to waste MORE bandwidth re-downloading the "package" because it's not smart enough to only refresh 'small changes'. Or whatever.

[OK some of this is exaggerated to make a point]

But, if it's possible that "3rd party thing" can BREAK YOUR WEB SITE, you should WAKE UP NOW and FIX this problem (host script on YOUR server), instead of waking up at 0-dark-30 in the middle of a hangover when your cell phone won't stop ringing, and it's work calling, and YOU have to fix it (and it's not YOUR fault - except that you used "that library").

On a correlated tragedy:

Have you noted how dismal is the 'Open' licensing landscape?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_programming_languages

Going back to bash/gawk...

"The wording we used here was not perfect..."

Where's the new one? Sure this is not pure PR.

Kik is deeply sorry that "our lawyers gonna be banging on your door" was interpreted as anything but a polite request.

Name clashes aren't uncommon - I have one

I got name-clashed by MySQL (and now MariaDB too) no less - they include a binary called "replace" (despite almost all their binaries having a "mysql" prefix), which was first shipped years after the "replace" utility I wrote was released. A polite request from me asking them to rename it to "mysqlreplace" was ignored, which is annoying because MySQL's replace command is not good to say the least...

I hate when people think that older = smarter.

Why do you need to link javascript with "kids".

As someone mentioned, get down off your high horses.

Be humble, learn from the youngers, from the older.

Life is made of experiences, not of how long you have lived doing nothing, watching TV or stuck in your bubble of old-days tech and languages.

The more you talk about all this stuff from the past, trying to look smarter or the knowledge king, more you look like a kid, trying to get acceptance and reward in the world that you wrongly think you don't fit anymore.

wrote to their chatbot, maybe she has a heart

https://twitter.com/andrejlr/status/712887779185831936?s=08

If you are not being paid I don't see why you can't play games making information appear and disappear from the web. You have a perfect right to do that if you like.

npm now obsolete

https://gist.github.com/rauchg/5b032c2c2166e4e36713