In the early days of software development, we wrote everything from scratch. Libraries were scarce, and dependencies were viewed with suspicion. Fast forward to today, and the pendulum has swung wildly in the opposite direction. Modern development is built on layers of dependencies -> npm packages, Ruby gems, Python wheels, Go modules. They're convenient, they're powerful, but sometimes they're also dangerous, hard to maintain and are not always backward compatible.
Dependency bloat has become the silent productivity drag on software projects. It's not just about the size of your node_modules folder or the length of your requirements.txt. It's about the hidden costs that compound over time, making your codebase harder to maintain, your applications less secure, and your development process slower and more frustrating.
What starts as a quick "npm install" to solve an immediate problem often ends up as technical debt that haunts the project for years.
Let's unpack why dependency bloat is such a pervasive problem and what you can do about it.
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