I've been looking at trialing AngularJS to see if it will help make my projects perform better and be simpler to maintain. However, it's already causing me angst due to it's insistence on using npm and bower package managers. I've been working with Javascript for the web for 10-15 years and I've never had to go through this much trouble to use a library. (Cue the grandpa voice) In my day, we just downloaded the files we needed need through the browser and copied them into the web page directories. When did Javascript/web development suddenly require 13 million dependencies? Like this NodeJS thing that seems so ubiquitous; I've only really heard of it in the last 6 months. </rant>
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__The main plus of package manager is easy deployment to local environment. You have no need to download all files, you just need a file with dependencies (in case NPM package.json). Then write "npm install" and all is done. You can easely manipulate with your dependencies (upgrade, choose version and so on).
I understand the benefits of using a package manager. My issue is that if you're not using one, it can be hard to even test out some code.
The example that triggered this, was trying to learn AngularJS. Everything told me to use npm and bower, and I found it nearly impossible obtain libraries without them. Both programs caused a lot of hassles on my machine. Also, since I was writing client-side code, I was aiming to minimize the number of files that the user's browser would need to download; there's enough bad sites on the web that so that already (e.g. Yahoo)