npm weekly #91: More on scoped search support, new npm humans, Code + Learn comes to npm!

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npm, Inc.

3 min readApr 20, 2017

Little known facts about scope support in npm’s package search

Last week, we announced that scopes are now supported in npm’s package search feature, but did you know that every npm account comes with a free scope? You — you! — can publish packages within your personal name space. Users of npm Orgs also get a free scope.

Along with search support, we’ve also made download statistics for scoped packages available via the public download counts API. Learn more about both of these new features by checking out the npm blog.

Welcome new npm humans Alex Early and Graham Carlson

We’re growing! This week, welcome Alex Early and Graham Carlson to the npm team. ☺️

Alex Early is an engineer on the services team. He’ll be working on the registry, the website, and the various APIs and services that make it all work. He’s previously worked projects with everything from Actionscript to zsh; he started working with Node.js and open source around 5 years ago; and he became the primary maintainer of the Async library about 2 years ago. What’s cool about Alex? “I am a coherent conglomeration of JavaScript expressions that somehow passes for human.” In retrospect he added, “…you’re right, this is cheesy.”

The actual description for Graham Carlson’s job was remarkably brief. He’ll be focusing on creating, curating, and distributing our marketing, or as Jon put it, “Doing all the things.” Graham’s a Bay Area native who went to school in New York City, wisely returned, and now lives in Oakland. In his free time he’s an amateur boxer and also works on restoring a 1971 Cutlass Supreme.

The first Node.js Code + Learn comes to the Bay Area

npm will be hosting the first Code + Learn event of 2017, a free in-person event where developers receive mentoring from Node.js Core contributors to learn the step-by-step process of contributing to Node.js Core. Watch the video to learn more about the event, and sign up to attend.

What we’re reading: Words To Avoid in Educational Writing

Documentation, or, in a broader sense, the way you communicate about your work or project, can be critical in determining who decides to contribute to or join your team. Inspired by a Twitter discussion, Chris Coyier created a post for CSS-Tricks, Words To Avoid in Educational Writing. As we read the list, it actually inspired us to double-check this very email for any unnecessary offenders.

Also worth reading is the follow up to his original post: Those Words Again, which is a list of similarly focused posts from others in the community.

Danger, danger! High Node.js ⚡️

We saw this cool PR showing Danger JS in action and had to share it. Danger JS, or Danger on Node, was created by the folks at Danger Systems. Danger JS can fail your build, write a comment on GitHub, edit it as your PR changes, and then delete it once you’ve passed review, making just about everything a little bit easier. It’s pretty cool, so check it out.