50% of new NPM packages are spam
When I did a coding boot camp, one of our assignments was to push a package to RubyGems. It didn&#x27;t matter if the package did anything; just make up a name and publish it. I&#x27;m pretty sure this kind of thing was a common practice with other boot camps, and applied to NPM as well. I always despised how this effectively trashes the repository and represents a complete waste of digital space, no matter how insignificant, as well as take up names that could go towards code that is actually useful. I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if a significant number of spam NPM packages were these boot camp assignments.