688: Ex-npm Employee Making a New Package Manager?! Vlt with Darcy Clarke

In this podcast episode, Scott Tolinski and Wes Boss are joined by guest Darcy Clark to discuss a range of topics related to web development. They share their past experiences and talk about the early web technologies they worked with. The hosts also explore the evolution of web development trends and their personal journey with NPM. They address the challenges and potential improvements in JavaScript package management, including the role of private package registries. Takeaways • The hosts discuss their past experiences working together and reminisce about challenges in web development, such as filtering out swear words from tweet walls. • They highlight the transition from using flash servers to Socket.IO for socket-based communication and mention their experiences with technologies like jQuery and WebSockets. • The conversation focuses on the MVC structure, Expression Engine, WordPress ecosystem, and PHP docs, noting their observations and experiences with these technologies. • The episode covers the journey of the speaker at MPM, including the challenges faced and the acquisition of MPM by GitHub. • The significance of NPM as the largest package manager and registry for JavaScript is emphasized, along with its use in front-end and back-end development. • The speaker discusses the challenges and chaos in working with NPM, highlighting the importance of addressing inefficiencies in package management. • The introduction of Volt, a new package manager and registry solution, is discussed, with a focus on improving package installation and resolution efficiency. • The conversation explores package management efficiency, different package managers like NPM and pnpm, and possible optimizations in the future. • The debate on pre-bundling and shipping authored code is examined, highlighting the challenges and potential risks involved. • The hosts discuss JavaScript tooling and configuration challenges, including the complexity of managing multiple config files in large-scale projects. • The chapter explores the challenges of various configuration formats and the potential benefits of hiding config files and nesting them under package.json. • The importance of having on-prem registries for companies to ensure trust, reliability, and control over package installations is emphasized. • The risks and potential vulnerabilities in the NPM ecosystem are discussed, along with the introduction of Socket.dev as a new approach to package analysis. • The collaboration between Frost and GitHub's Vault is examined, focusing on the innovations and metadata provided by Vault and the concept of dependency selectors. • Frost shares his sick picks, including his dog, the magazine Scientific American, and Nespresso machines. • The hosts discuss their interests in engineering, movies, and music, sharing recommendations and experiences. • The chapter explores the challenges and experiences in securing domain names and usernames, with a focus on acquiring distinctive ones. • TikTok's involvement in JavaScript and their customized JavaScript runtime are discussed, with the hosts seeking insights into TikTok's activities.