Why Is node_modules So Big?

Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats

Wes Bos

Tech News, News, Technology

4.9 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2023

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes talk about the reasons your node_modules folder gets so large, and what you can do to help keep the file size down. Show Notes 00:24 Welcome 00:51 The punching bag of Javascript DaisyDisk 02:03 Spoiler alert - it’s text 04:49 What actually increases the size? 07:29 Types 09:27 Polyfills 11:09 Raycast Snippets and BetterTouchTool 12:44 Babel 15:08 Markdown 15:52 Translations 18:23 What is the solution? Raycast Bundlephobia | Size of npm dependencies Better Touch Tool Fast, disk space efficient package manager | pnpm Tweet us your tasty treats Scott’s Instagram LevelUpTutorials Instagram Wes’ Instagram Wes’ Twitter Wes’ Facebook Scott’s Twitter Make sure to include @SyntaxFM in your tweets Wes Bos on Bluesky Scott on Bluesky Syntax on Bluesky

Transcript

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0:00.0	Monday! Monday! Monday! Open wide dev fans! Get ready to stuff your face with
0:07.0	JavaScript CSS! Node modules! Barbecue tips! Get workflow! Break dancing! Soft skills!
0:12.0	Web development! The hastiest! The Carrazius! The tastiest! Web development
0:17.0	treats! Coming in hot! Here is Wes Barakuda! Boss and Scott El Torro Lugo!
0:24.0	Tolinsky!
0:27.0	Welcome to syntax on this Monday hasty treat. We're going to be talking about
0:32.0	Node modules. And why is that folder so big? Why aren't the Node modules
0:37.0	folder? What's going on inside of that giant behemoth of a folder inside
0:42.0	of every single one of your projects? My name is Scott Tolinsky. I'm a developer
0:46.0	from Denver with me, as always, is Wes, the Node modules boss.
0:53.0	Yeah, so it's kind of a bit of a meme in the Web development world that the
1:00.0	Node modules folder is massive. And anytime anyone brings up working in
1:06.0	JavaScript, it's sort of like the punching bag of, oh well, it's so huge.
1:11.0	And then there's a meme with the heaviest things on Earth and the Node modules.
1:15.0	It's the biggest one. It's like this. How do you center stuff in CSS of JavaScript?
1:20.0	Exactly. And I laugh at those, but also sometimes I'm just like, well,
1:25.0	it's not your end JavaScript is not actually going to be that big. Most of that,
1:32.0	I would say almost all of it is not the actual JavaScript that will make it
1:37.0	into your bundle or your runtime or something like that. So I thought let's do a
1:43.0	show and just talk about what is actually in there. Why are these things so big?
1:48.0	Because people like to complain about it being so big and certainly there are
1:52.0	issues that could be solved. But there's a lot of stuff in there that makes your
	...

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