Best thing about the Facebook framework is it’s name, honoring the…uh..structure of the JS community :-)

Regarding a sort of base lib for JS: That’s the problem (but also what makes the NPM community so fast moving) — nobody owns it. Nobody quality controls anything. If it’s out there, it might just be used — even though it’s an implementation littered with bugs. Of course, if it’s really bad, it’ll probably be noticed — but still.

And regarding module size: I still think one should consider modules and functions as separate things. In NPM today, they are (sometimes) the same. One-line functions that simply wraps if’s and for-loops in some new syntax. Not my cup of tea. “basic-math” is a potential module. “plus” just isn’t in my ears.

Of course, this doesn’t go for everything in there, but some of it. Which leads to the next problem I mentioned: The insanely large dependency trees you end up with.

You have a point, Node-based apps are probably not going to be the same monoliths of yesteryear. However, all non trivial software grows into fairly large code bases after a while. And when your dependency tree grows, the larger the risk of having issues with one or a hundred of the included modules.

And also, splitting a monolith into micro services might be good — but it also comes with a separate set of complexities you have to manage. But that’s a whole ‘nother topic ;-)