When it comes to web dependencies, this talk will leave your packages tied up in a perfect bow!
In today’s world, JavaScript projects can easily turn into a tangled skein of code and confusion. Carmen Huidobro’s WebExpo 2025 session, “Untangling Your Dependencies: A Pattern for a Well-Knit JavaScript Project,” delivered a fresh and funny look at how to manage complex dependencies without losing your sanity or your sense of humour. Through clever knitting analogies and sharp insights, Carmen unraveled the hidden chaos behind dependency management and showed developers how to build projects that stay clean, consistent, and maintainable.
The tangled web of JavaScript dependencies
“You know, I’m developing React, do I put that in dev dependencies?” Carmen kicked off by spotlighting a familiar pain point: the confusion between direct, dev, transitive and peer dependencies. She admitted she used to take dependencies for granted until one day her package-lock.json file ballooned to 18,000 lines. The result? A wake-up call about the complexity hidden beneath our everyday npm installs. Her key takeaway is simple: understanding how dependencies interconnect is the first step to keeping your project from spiralling into chaos.
One of Carmen’s biggest messages is about the power of community. “There’s a ton of tools out there that are helping us manage our dependencies in a way that really becomes a lot more manageable.”
By embracing community-built tools like yarn upgrade-interactive and npm-check-updates, developers can simplify maintenance, spot vulnerabilities early and keep their stacks secure. Carmen championed these tools as your allies in making upgrades less painful and much more predictable.
Divide and conquer
For developers facing the challenges of a gargantuan project, Carmen offered a strategic solution: “It can be like a very, very tricky act of balance… It’s really about dividing and conquering.” Break your workload into digestible chunks. Run your iOS app before worrying about Android. Fix one dependency issue before tackling the next. Her approach helps teams make steady, visible progress instead of drowning in technical knots.
Tooling for success
No one-size-fits-all solution exists when it comes to tooling. Carmen compared Yarn, NPM and PNPM without taking sides, showing where each shines. She also highlighted utilities like KNIP and NPMY for cleaning up unused dependencies, keeping your projects lean. For those working across multiple repositories, she praised NX and Yarn Workspaces for their ability to keep shared dependencies well organised, like perfectly labelled skeins in your toolkit.
Keeping it current: The importance of bleeding edge branches
One of Carmen’s favourite ideas is the bleeding edge branch. She explained, “I love version control… the bleeding edge branch… make a big, big mess, nothing compiles.” This experimental branch lets developers test wild ideas safely. You can break everything, then trace back what works. It’s a method that celebrates curiosity and iteration, echoing Martin Fowler’s advice: “If it hurts, do it more often.”
Knowing when to stop
In the fast-paced world of software development, knowing when to stop is as vital as knowing when to act. Carmen’s experience highlights the need for discernment in selecting which packages to upgrade or remove and when to take those steps. “Especially when developing mobile applications on React Native, you’re depending on at least three entities,” she explains, urging developers to future-proof their projects by keeping them stable and updated. While acknowledging the human realities behind open-source contributions, Carmen offers a compassionate understanding of the ongoing work involved.
In fast-moving development cycles, it’s easy to over-optimise. Carmen reminded us that restraint matters too. Particularly in React Native projects, dependencies often come from multiple sources, and updating one can easily break another. Carmen advised developers to balance stability with innovation, keeping projects secure but not at the cost of peace of mind. She also emphasised us to stay empathetic toward the open-source maintainers who make our work possible.
Final thoughts
Carmen Huidobro’s talk at WebExpo 2025 is more than a tutorial on dependency management; it is an enlightening journey through the challenges and triumphs of modern software development. By blending technical insights with real-world anecdotes and whimsical humour, Carmen presented a framework for developers to untangle their dependencies, creating projects that are both functional and beautifully maintainable and yes, stitch by stitch.
For those interested in a deeper exploration of the talk, watch the video recording and slides here: