The problem is that there is little incentive to "clean up" and move away from the bottomless trough of is-even type packages... similarly, how many front-end tools require one of the many utility packages that effectively just wrap some minor functionality around document.querySelector? Is the problem inexperienced developers? (the article talks about this as well)
I'm also curious how many HN readers and JS devs in general were, at some point, told to "not reinvent the wheel", instructed (by a professor, by a mentor...) to use libraries wherever possible, and extrapolated that out to today, where so many devs have found a way to justify requiring is-even (there are hundreds, thousands of packages like this)...
I don't think we talk enough about the downsides of DRY.
Reinventing the wheel for the sake of reinventing the wheel (not-invented-here) is a problem, but reinventing it for the sake of learning more about wheels is a big deal.
I suppose many developers reach for libraries because they're more confident that the libraries will implement things correctly/more efficiently than they could. But if they keep reaching for libraries (instead of trying to write an `isEven` function themselves) then they never really improve either.
Most developers work under constant time pressure and usually with a fixed budget. Choices have to be made. Sometimes ugly code will creep in, because doing better is simply not worth the investment. Many projects don't have a very long lifespan anyway.
Pet project usually get a lot more attention, but rewriting existing libraries is not exactly fun and will require maintenance when made public, so that does not happen often.
I'm also curious how many HN readers and JS devs in general were, at some point, told to "not reinvent the wheel", instructed (by a professor, by a mentor...) to use libraries wherever possible, and extrapolated that out to today, where so many devs have found a way to justify requiring is-even (there are hundreds, thousands of packages like this)...