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Me at 3 front-end tech screenings of candidates with +3y of exp last year: "can you name a few npm commands you have used?"

Candidate:
- "Ehh.. npm start?" (npm start is a shortcut to a user-defined run-script)
- "npm version, it publishes the package" (wrong)
- "not going to pretend I know and sound stupid"

Mind you these candidates were not necessarily bad, but come on? You never used npm info, outdated, audit, install, remove, update, why, link, init?

Comments
  • 7
    It is all done by the IDE most of the time and for the few exception i just google it. Tools change - concepts stay.
  • 0
  • 2
    I just click buttons in webstorm
  • 2
    Not to mention all of this stuff belongs to the CI/CD pipeline, not on the devs' terminals :)

    install, uninstall and run are usually the only things a dev ever needs.
  • 0
    I know just a handful of npm commands: start, run dev, run test, run build, install. Now if they don’t know what a DOM or a promise is, that would be a bit different
  • 0
    @CoreFusionX not really.

    A dev should care wether the crap they build or the dependencies they stuff in makes sense and are up to date.
  • 0
    @TeachMeCode you only named 2: npm run & install. To me that signals that you don't have any experience maintaining an NPM package (or app), which is a common part of front-end jobs.

    @CoreFusionX no. Would you leave upgrading major versions to a CI/CD pipeline? Besides, someone has got to set up and tweak the pipeline
  • 2
    @webketje

    Yes, exactly. New tag/release branch? Change version.

    Pipeline is maintained by team lead and DevOps, as it should.

    By the way, team lead should also be responsible for choosing the dependencies to use, not random devs.
  • 2
    @CoreFusionX let's agree to disagree because you and I have seemingly operated in wildly different contexts.

    I expect (good) devs to take co-ownership, propose enhancements to the build process and co-maintain pipelines and dependencies. It's part of the job.
  • 2
    @webketje

    It may be me just being cynical and negative, but I've learnt to not expect good devs 😂, especially when JavaScript is involved.
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