After years of wrestling with Lodash's quirks and bundle size issues, I decided to build something better. SuperUtilsPlus is my attempt at creating the utility library I wish existed.
What makes it different?
TypeScript-first approach: Unlike Lodash's retrofitted types, I built this from the ground up with TypeScript. The type inference actually works the way you'd expect it to.
Sensible defaults: Some of Lodash's decisions always bugged me. Like isObject([]) returning true - arrays aren't objects in my mental model. Or isNumber(NaN) being true when NaN literally stands for "Not a Number". I fixed these footguns.
Modern JavaScript: Built for ES2020+ with proper ESM support. No more weird CommonJS/ESM dance. Actually tree-shakable: You can import from specific modules (super-utils/array, super-utils/object) for optimal bundling. Your users will thank you.
The best parts IMO:
compactNil() - removes only null/undefined, leaves falsy values like 0 and false alone
differenceDeep() - array difference with deep equality (surprisingly useful)
Better random utilities with randomUUID() and randomString()
debounce() that actually works how you expect with proper leading/trailing options
Also genuinely curious - what are your biggest pain points with utility libraries? Did I miss any must-have functions?
Correct me if I am wrong, but Array factually are JS objects and "[] instanceof Object" is true.
Fair enough if that does not fit your mental model, but I would not use any library that treats facts like opinions.
I’d surface the footgun rather than trying to pretend it’s not there: isNonArrayObject and isObjectOrArray, or something like that
"isObject" is just not well-defined for other cases that might be interesting, in my opinion. Not just "null" or arrays.
Functions can have properties (although they don't have the object prototype or primitive type).
Class instances behave differently compared to plain objects when used with libraries or other code that inspects the shape or prototype of objects, or wants to serialize them to JSON.
If you deal with unknown foreign values that are expected to be a JSON-serializable value, you could go with something like
But it does not deal with all the non-JSON objects, e.g. Map or other class instances that are not even JSON-serializable by default.When data comes from parsing unknown JSON, the check above should be enough.
In other cases, the program should already know what is being passed into a function. No matter if through discipline or with the aid of an additional type syntax.
For library code that needs to reflect on unknown data at runtime, I think it's worth looking at Vue2's hilarious solution, probably a very good and performant choice, no matter how icky it might look:
Since the string representations of built-ins have long ago become part of the spec, it seems that there is no real issue with this!The word 'object' has different meanings. One includes arrays and the other does not. They prefer the latter. You prefer the former. I don't think this has much to do with 'facts' and 'opinions', but rather with the practicality of choosing a certain way to speak.
I’d liken it to the word 'sorting'. JavaScript libraries sort in a certain way that is simple to implement. However, this is so different from what we typically mean by 'sorting' that people came up with natural sorting algorithms. Are these people treating facts like opinions on how to sort? I’d rather say, they acknowledge the relevance of a certain way to speak.
As in, I want actual zero dependencies, not even the library itself. The reason: I never want these to randomly update.
I really havent figured out why professional systems insist running on the bleeding edge - it’s your feet are bleeding here I believe. 10 year … 15 year old code is generally excellent if you know it through and thorough.
You'd miss out on CVEs because you don't use the common dependency paradigm.
You'd also miss out on bug fixes if you are not detecting the bug itself.
Help me understand because I'm with you on less dependencies but this does feel a bit extreme.
If the vendored code needs to be updated because of a change in your build tools or whatever then you’ll likely be making similar changes to other parts of your project.
We just migrated a React app with around 500k LOC and this worked quite well and flawless.
So I think trying to be better here is pointless, better focus on offering more helpful utility functions which might be missing in es-toolkit
Suggestion: add more tests and run some benchmarks
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Is there an idiomatic way to duplicate a hash while replacing one of its values, preferably something that supports nesting?
Whenever I work with react and immutable structures, this comes up and I hack something simple.
I don’t do FE on a regular basis though so my perspective may be skewed.