[epoch1970]

We should be careful when comparing the growth or package counts of CPAN and npm. While conceptually similar, they're still very different from one another.

A lot of the npm growth is just the JavaScript ecosystem catching up to where CPAN was ages ago.

Then there are the npm packages that add functionality that's typically included by default with Perl, so there would never really be a need for equivalent CPAN modules.

I think there is much less duplication within CPAN, while it's not unusual to find several similar npm packages that more or less do the same thing.

CPAN modules also tend to be larger and include more functionality, while it's not unusual for npm packages to include just a single function, or otherwise limited functionality. Sometimes several npm packages are needed to approximate the functionality of individual CPAN modules.

That module count graph should perhaps even be treated as worrying. Npm is clearly an outlier compared to every other package management system listed. There's not much suggesting it's inherently better than all of the other systems, either. So it's likely more negative factors, such as an excessive need for functionality, and many duplicate packages, and unreasonably small packages, and so on causing such inflated numbers.

[mst]

Plus there's the fashion of uploading one npm dist per function, as well as a bundled dist, for projects not using tree shaking to keep their browser bundle small.

OTOH while I'm mostly a perl hacker, there's a metric fucktonne of duplication on CPAN too, so I'm not sure that comment necessarily applies (there may be more duplication on npm, but I don't have data for that).

[gkya]

Furthermore, AFAIK NPM is more than a module manager for Node.js, IIRC many use it for CSS and other languages.