&gt; Apparently, it is considered normal now to have build process download dozens of these npm modules.<p>Tons of NPM modules are small single functions with tests. NPM requires very little boilerplate to publish modules, so you get lots of small and focused (and hopefully composable) modules. Not every module is a megabyte+ one-stop kitchen-sink-containing toolkit that&#x27;s mostly redundant with your other dependencies.<p>Though the linked article is specifically complaining about unmaintained tools in the sbt ecosystem. It doesn&#x27;t appear he&#x27;s using a build system using NPM modules.