49 engineers on Hacker News describe using npm first-hand: 4 endorse it, 18 regret it, 1 are mixed.
“we no longer rely on anything from NPM, to call this a simplification would be a gross understatement.”
regret · production · swannodette · 2026-07-06 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Among other things, the attack space for npm is just so much larger.”
regret · production · smithkl42 · 2025-09-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“am still waiting for npm to add a symlink option.”
regret · personal · sam_goody · 2025-09-12 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We replaced the intended usage with local NPM package. It made everything better.”
endorse · production · Ygg2 · 2024-04-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Just remembering trying to install something from npm sends shivers down my spine. Never again.”
regret · personal · archargelod · 2024-01-23 · source ↗ · wrong label?“our npm scripts were getting messier in absense of task dependencies, lack of multiline support, comments in json”
regret · production · lf-non · 2023-07-16 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Adding a single NPM library became a total PITA, as it linked to another 100 other NPM libraries, which in-tern linked to an additional 100+ other NPM libraries.”
regret · production · cobookman · 2021-01-12 · source ↗ · wrong label?“NPM works decently but putting 5 million files into my node_modules folder is absurd.”
mixed · production · randombytes6869 · 2020-06-06 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Until package-lock came, npm wasn't deterministic.”
regret · production · nojvek · 2020-01-28 · source ↗ · wrong label?“When using NPM/Node/JavaScript it seems there are always hidden dangers”
regret · production · pier25 · 2019-06-24 · source ↗ · wrong label?“especially bundling quirks with Webpack and NPM.”
regret · production · Tehnix · 2018-11-29 · source ↗ · wrong label?“NPM is one of the reasons we've moved to Go for our server side code.”
regret · production · pier25 · 2018-11-26 · source ↗ · wrong label?“After the Nth time in which npm failed to install correctly (incorrect package resolution and even an occasional stack overflow exception) we moved to yarn”
regret · production · royjacobs · 2018-10-12 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I don't understand how NPM is such a dumpster fire... All our JS/TS projects inevitably end up with rm -rf node_modules as the first build step.”
regret · production · thermodynthrway · 2018-07-13 · source ↗ · wrong label?“NPM can be mind-bogglingly slow in Windows. In my previous day-job, an NPM install on Windows 7 could take hours”
regret · production · alayek · 2017-08-24 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Yarn takes 12 seconds to install all of our node_modules, npm@5 (latest) takes over 12 minutes. This made it completely and utterly untenable for our CI system”
regret · production · X-Istence · 2017-08-10 · source ↗ · wrong label?“it was way more readable than the npm-shrinkwrap.json and it is easier to fix merge conflicts in the yarn.lock.”
regret · production · leipert · 2017-07-09 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we moved to yarn a while ago due to performance issues and it seems to be resolved”
regret · production · eknkc · 2017-05-26 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using NPM for frontend components for... 3 years minimum?”
endorse · production · 3 yr · kaoD · 2016-12-06 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We've run into this issue[0] on npm with a bad interaction between optional dependencies and the shrinkwrap.”
regret · production · losvedir · 2016-10-11 · source ↗ · wrong label?“the ecosystem, not just React but the npm ecosystem in general, has been a bit disappointing”
regret · production · yawgmoth · 2016-08-14 · source ↗ · wrong label?“it is a very straight forward process that makes development and starting new projects much quicker and easier.”
endorse · production · williamcotton · 2014-12-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I found NodeJS + NPM very productive.”
endorse · personal · CyberFonic · 2014-11-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I for a long time just was using npm so I understand why some would rather not change package managers.”
neutral · personal · jtwebman · 2026-10-16 · source ↗ · wrong label?“if im running my app locally (via npm run dev or what have you)”
neutral · personal · vhcosta · 2026-04-30 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I have been using Docker for installing NPM modules in interactive projects I was testing out.”
neutral · personal · czbond · 2025-12-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“its worked as a drop in replacement for npm in large legacy projects too”
neutral · production · yieldcrv · 2025-12-02 · source ↗ · wrong label?“checking the relevant time on npm registry, and returns error if it finds a too fresh package added.”
neutral · production · splix · 2025-11-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We have a similar setup for NPM and Pypi on the same machine.”
neutral · production · tempest_ · 2025-08-31 · source ↗ · wrong label?“a builder that can run git and mvn and npm to automatically sync up and build a collection of Java and Javascript projects”
neutral · personal · PaulHoule · 2024-12-02 · source ↗ · wrong label?“It's always a bit odd coming from npm/node into something like Deno”
neutral · personal · gorbypark · 2023-11-30 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I don't even use npm for half the things I work on, because there is no need for it.”
neutral · personal · Beltalowda · 2022-12-26 · source ↗ · wrong label?“It just listens on our git repo and runs the NPM standard build and start commands to run the app”
neutral · production · presentation · 2021-12-27 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I was happy with Pip until I spent time in the NPM/Yarn world.”
neutral · personal · Humphrey · 2020-11-30 · source ↗ · wrong label?“For fast iteration we just `npm start`, and when we're ready to do more elaborated testing we run with SAM.”
neutral · production · iCarrot · 2020-10-13 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I do run security checks (e.g. npm audit)”
neutral · production · paulddraper · 2019-12-31 · source ↗ · wrong label?“abbr -a n 'npm run' abbr -a y yarn abbr -a m make”
neutral · personal · ludwigvan · 2018-12-30 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Generated contracts are isomorphic and work well from Node.js and a browser while being simply packed with NPM.”
neutral · personal · buybackoff · 2017-12-12 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Here's a post that an engineer on my team wrote about why we switched from NPM to Yarn”
neutral · production · kt9 · 2017-04-29 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I had to install hundreds of dependencies via NPM.”
neutral · personal · conradk · 2016-12-11 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I'm doing front end work in JS, using mostly the same tooling npm, babel (though with webpack on front end now)”
neutral · production · tracker1 · 2016-12-08 · source ↗ · wrong label?“when something apparently unrelated in the NPM set-up is updated”
neutral · production · Silhouette · 2016-01-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“occasionally running "npm outdated", checking the packages for their Changelog.md”
neutral · production · mAritz · 2015-12-16 · source ↗ · wrong label?“or Node (with npm), that again have their own package managers”
neutral · production · Scarblac · 2015-11-23 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Our main workflow involved using Yeoman, Grunt, NPM, wp (the wordpress command line tool) and vagrant.”
neutral · production · PopeOfNope · 2015-11-08 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Hook it up to npm scripts and I've got all I need”
neutral · personal · thomasfoster96 · 2015-07-27 · source ↗ · wrong label?“to run every task you just use npm run-scripts.”
neutral · personal · TheAceOfHearts · 2015-06-21 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Where I work, we use Grunt and npm for our PHP projects, and I'm in the process of replacing them”
neutral · production · girvo · 2014-12-14 · source ↗ · wrong label?“For the latest project at work I've been using Yeoman with Grunt, Bower and NPM for the Node part.”
neutral · production · winkerVSbecks · 2013-11-12 · source ↗ · wrong label?