> In JS you need a handful of third party packages just to tell if a number is odd
Maybe it's hyperbole, but you definitely don't "need" any third-party package to tell if a number is odd (`i % 2` does the trick). That there exists a package for it doesn't mean that the majority of users actually use it.
The standard library for JS is pretty small in general, but I don't think hyperbole is the right way of getting your point across, as I agree with you in general.
is-odd gets between 400k and 500k downloads every week[1]. Maybe you don't need it, but lots of JS developers have decided that they do. is-odd also depends on is-number, and is-even depends on is-odd.
I agree that these packages are trivially implemented by a first party instead of imported, but ~half a million JS developers every week choose to import it instead. _That is the problem_.
I'm fairly certain those download numbers include CI runs redownloading the not-cached package over and over, likely via a transitive dependency. I don't think it's fair to say approximately half a million unique JS developers are choosing to import it every week.
These numbers aren't too hard to rack up for well-known packages (even the meme ones like this). e.g. is-odd is a transitive dependency of stuff like handlebars-helpers which gets a lot of downloads and will pull in is-odd automatically.
Maybe it's hyperbole, but you definitely don't "need" any third-party package to tell if a number is odd (`i % 2` does the trick). That there exists a package for it doesn't mean that the majority of users actually use it.
The standard library for JS is pretty small in general, but I don't think hyperbole is the right way of getting your point across, as I agree with you in general.