The answer is counter-intuitive. It's interesting, so hopefully the author will go into detail.

The advantages would include shared tooling, a cross-platform GUI, and the ability for end-users to modify the code.

Regarding size, it appears to be around 100 MB, so you could have 20971 separate installations of it before filling up a 2 TB drive.

Memory usage could be an issue, but whether that matters will depend on your audience the app. In this case, the aim is toward HN, so it doesn't seem like an issue.

While I hope flash drives will come down in price, who has a 2TB flash drive right now? My entire desktop OS, with at least three web browsers, multiple sdks/compilers etc take up a grand total of 15GB. Granted, that'd still leave room for 150 "apps" in the same space (note that I actually only have 3GB free, though). Still, 100 MB for what is essentially high-level code? It's absurd.

[ed: Not directed at op, as such, just how silly the general node ecosystem is currently]

On the flip side, that's 10 full installations of Doom, which is my standard measure of software size.

(Be sure to run npm install first.)

And install node... which I don't use...

In case it's helpful,

  hacker-menu$ node install
  module.js:338
      throw err;
            ^
  Error: Cannot find module 'hacker-menu/install'
      at Function.Module._resolveFilename (module.js:336:15)
      at Function.Module._load (module.js:278:25)
      at Function.Module.runMain (module.js:501:10)
      at startup (node.js:129:16)
      at node.js:814:3

    > node install

It's `npm install`

Ah, the bug was between the ears. Thanks.

The app seems pretty nice. I wonder why people are saying harsh things?