This might sound like complaining but I need to get this off my chest. I’ve been building web applications for over a decade and I’m honestly frustrated with how complicated frontend development has become. Recently I tried adding error tracking to a React project that was built by another team. The amount of package conflicts and version mismatches I ran into was insane.
I think the main issue is how easy it is to just npm install whatever library seems to solve your problem. This has created this massive web of tiny packages that all depend on each other and half of them are already outdated by the time you install them.
Then you find out your Docker container is running an old Node version that doesn’t work with some random build tool. It never ends.
How do other developers handle this constant maintenance overhead? Do you just live with it or have you found better approaches?
hmm, this is intresting - have you ever considered going back to simpler approaches? like, what if we just used vanilla js or basic frameworks for some projects? im curious if the complexity is really worth it for every use case or if we’ve just gotten caught up in the hype. what kind of projects do you think actually need all these dependencies?
The dependency management problem you describe is unfortunately the cost of the modern JavaScript ecosystem’s flexibility. After dealing with similar issues across multiple enterprise projects, I’ve found that treating package management as a deliberate architectural decision rather than an afterthought makes a significant difference. I now dedicate time upfront to evaluate each dependency’s maintenance status, bundle size impact, and compatibility with our existing stack before adding it. The key shift was moving from reactive maintenance to proactive dependency governance. This means regular audits, keeping a minimal dependency footprint, and sometimes choosing slightly more work upfront to avoid the cascading update problems later. The maintenance overhead never disappears completely, but it becomes much more predictable and manageable when you approach it systematically rather than reactively.
honestly yeah its exhausting lol. i started pinning exact versions in package.json and using lockfiles religiously after getting burned too many times. also switched to pnpm which handles the dependency hell a bit better than npm. still sucks tho