Programmers know package managers as an easy way of distributing reusable libraries and plugins. By using one, you're literally saving yourself a lot of time spent setting things up, upgrading things, or even pushing things to production servers. A good package manager can be a life saver!
You'll find - if you care to dig deep enough - that there is no shortage of package managers on the web. Every programming language has at least two. Are you're a software developer who is still using traditional methods of handling libraries? It's much easier to stay in control of dependencies since you just change a number in a text file and execute a command. The package manager is doing all the work for you.
Thanks, Wikipedia, for the image!
I don't think you can call it a failure for not using a package manager, but it does have a significant effect on your workflow, and if you really want to become a better developer down the road, then perhaps now is the time to begin using these tools!
npm - NPM is the most popular package manager for Node.js, and the web. It's also one of the rare developers tools to attract serious investors. It's the home of nearly one hundred thousand unique packages, with multiple million downloads combined every single day.
Bower - Bower is a package manager for the web. I actually covered this particular tool in a separate post a couple of months back, please check the attached link to see the full article. Hint: Bower is epic!
Component - Component is a vertically integrated frontend solution, handling everything from package management to the build process, handling everything including HTML, JS, CSS, images, and fonts. Think of it as an opinionated npm + browserify + rework-npm + grunt/gulp/broccoli all wrapped into component build.
Duo - Duo is a next-generation package manager that blends the best ideas from Component, Browserify and Go to make organizing and writing front-end code quick and painless.
jspm.io - Frictionless browser package management with support for ES6, CommonJS, AMD modules. jspm is a package manager for the SystemJS universal module loader, built on top of the dynamic ES6 module loader.
Package Managers for Node.js Developers
Node.js continues to change the way we interact with the web, and with languages like JavaScript. The list of web frameworks available for Node.js is growing very rapidly, developers behind popular frameworks like Express.js are doing everything they can to push new versions, with new and exciting features.