The “left pad” incident refers to a controversy that arose in 2016 when a developer named Azer Koçulu removed his JavaScript package called “left-pad” from the NPM (Node Package Manager) registry. This caused a ripple effect, breaking numerous projects that relied on this package and highlighting the potential risks of relying on external dependencies. The incident sparked a debate about the stability and trustworthiness of the open-source ecosystem and led to discussions about best practices for managing dependencies in software development.
Left pad https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/rage-quit-coder-unpublished-17-lines-of-javascript-and-broke-the-internet/
Had GPT summarize what happened.
This famously broke builds at Facebook.
This is the one I came to post about. The fact there’s a library for this is so stupid to me.
I feel like it demonstrates how npm and modules have probably to some degree gotten out of hand.