DEV Community

The NPM guide I would have loved as a beginner

Chandelier Axel on December 10, 2020

As a junior developer, I struggled a lot with NPM. Do you remember copy/pasting all the npm commands without knowing what they do ? Or the first ti...
Collapse
 
josuerodriguez98 profile image
Josué Rodríguez (He/Him)

Kudos! Nice article! Let me tell you a little story about when I started using node: I didn't know about the --save flag and I just installed everything with npm install . When I tried running the project on a friend's computer everything (as expected) crashed. After this, I remember putting into the README this:
"To run this project, please run these commands

  • npm install packageA
  • npm install packageB
  • npm install packageZ" 😂😂😂
Collapse
 
mendoza profile image
David Mendoza (He/Him)

gif

Collapse
 
chandelieraxel profile image
Chandelier Axel

Good thing this is now the default behavior !

Collapse
 
jessedebruijne profile image
Jesse de Bruijne

Nice article! I was a bit confused with the phrase:

Please don't do the same mistake as I did, and prevent committing this folder to your repository !

Because it can also be read as: "The mistake I made was not committing this folder". Maybe you could rephrase it a little. Other than that, very useful article!

Collapse
 
ionutarhire profile image
Arhire Ionut

I think you made a mistake when giving the examples with '~' and '^'. 4.18.1 should switch places with 4.17.9

Collapse
 
chandelieraxel profile image
Chandelier Axel

Indeed ! Such a big mistake, thanks for pointing out. It has been fixed now. <3

Collapse
 
patarapolw profile image
Pacharapol Withayasakpunt

If you ever use npm init -y, you should also know there is npm config set.

Collapse
 
brombaut profile image
Ben Rombaut

Good article. I remember one of the first questions I had when dealing with npm was whether the package-lock.json file was suppose to be committed to the origin repo, or whether it should be ignored like the node_modules directory.

Collapse
 
paras594 profile image
Paras 🧙‍♂️

This was quite useful !! :)

Collapse
 
ash_bergs profile image
Ash

Wonderful read, I loved how you covered the shorthand commands. Thanks for writing!

Collapse
 
zakariaelk profile image
Zakaria Elk

Very useful! Thank you!!

Collapse
 
kullboii profile image
Aadi Manchekar

Thank you!

Collapse
 
swedlong profile image
Alexander Chan

Really nice article!