I don't use 100% of the features I pull in. But I also don't use 100% of the features of libc or gtk if I'm building a GUI app in C.
I have 35 MB of node_modules, but after webpack walks the module hierarchy and tree-shakes out all module exports that aren't reachable, I'm left with a couple hundred kilobytes of code in the final product.
> But I also don't use 100% of the features of libc or gtk if I'm building a GUI app in C.
That’s exactly my point. This is a tradeoff that’s inherent to software development and has nothing to do with the web or Node or NPM. You could just as well decide to write your desktop app with a much smaller GUI library, or even write your own minimal one, if the tradeoff is worth it to reduce complexity. (Example: you’re writing an app for an embedded device with very limited resources that won’t be able to handle GTK.)
I have 35 MB of node_modules, but after webpack walks the module hierarchy and tree-shakes out all module exports that aren't reachable, I'm left with a couple hundred kilobytes of code in the final product.