I Peeked Into My Node_Modules Directory And You Won’t Believe What Happened Next

I originally wrote this post on Medium in 2016. It’s now behind a paywall, so I am posting it here on my own website in its entirety – Enjoy!

🔗 Express

$ tree node_modules/ | count
zsh: command not found: count
$ tree node_modules/ | lines
zsh: command not found: lines
$ tree node_modules/ | wc -lines
wc: illegal option — i
usage: wc [-clmw] [file …]
$ tree node_modules/ | wc -countlines
wc: illegal option — o
usage: wc [-clmw] [file …]
$ man wc
$ tree node_modules/ | wc -l
  292

├── yummy
│ ├── LICENSE
│ ├── README.md
│ ├── like-tweet.js
│ ├── index.js
│ └── package.json

var http = require("http")

http.request({
  method: "POST",
  hostname: "api.twitter.com",
  path: "/hotpockets/status/501511389320470528",
})

🔗 Ember

├─┬ glimmer@1.1.5
│ ├─┬ brittanica@13.0.2
│ │ ├── brittanica-a@0.0.1
│ │ ├── brittanica-b@0.1.2
│ │ ├── brittanica-c@0.0.3
│ │ ...

{
    "g": {
        "page": 1018,
        "description": "The seventh letter of the US English..."
    },
    "ga": {
        "page": 1021,
        "description": "a Kwa language of Ghana, spoken in Acc..."
    },
    ...
    "glimmer": {
        "page": 1172,
        "description": "A faint or wavering light, used pri..."
    },
    ...
}

module.exports = function help() {
    var descriptino = require("brittanica-g").glimmer;
    console.log("glimmer (n). " + descriptino);
    console.log("");
    console.log("Copyright (c) 2016 Tilde Inc");
    console.log("");
    ...
}

• Ember prides itself on using Glimmer: a small, lightning fast rendering library.
• Glimmer brings in the entirety of Encyclopedia Brittanica, just to display the definition for the word “glimmer” in its help menu.
• Our oceans are dying at an alarming rate and we’re all too busy staring at our phones playing Pokémon instead of having a conversation about it.

🔗 Babel

$ ls node_modules | wc -l
    90
$ du -sh node_modules
    17M node_modules

module.exports = require("./lib/api/node.js");

🔗 Conclusino