Run anywhere without installing locally, just like nodemon.

I npm install everything locally, never globally, and use npm run script to easily execute (and chain) stuff.

Am I in the minority?

Nah, I think installing locally is more common and often recommended. But I personally like the convenience of executing ad hoc bits of js on my laptop using `node` or `nodemon`. Why not the same for browser javascript?

E.g. you could do something like:

  cd ~/Desktop/foo
  npm i somepkg
  echo console.log(require('somepkg')()) > index.js
  jetpack

And now you're running some pkg in the browser, to try/test it out. That's what the use case for this feature really is. For real apps, I install it locally as well or else a breaking change in the future could cause issues.

e12e

No language has this down, but there's an environment manager (pip, rustup, rbenv..) that try to do all, and avoid the need to handle more than one "magic" session in your bashrc(etc): "asdf":

https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf

Now, a few new languages do come with pretty decent "virtual env" thingy-s , but most stumble for a few years.

So far (past year) I've been pretty happy with asdf. Mostly use it for ruby and node - but also rust and golang, lisp, Java and ocaml (mostly as a "consumer" of various cli tools, and/or toy projects.