Like the person you are replying to, I've been developing web apps since the 1990's (1997 in my case).
I'm unconvinced that 514 is crazy.
In fact, the only unusual thing I see there is that the author knows that number.
Back in then 1990's PHP was very popular. To use it, you had to compile it yourself, which involved compiling Apache 1.3 with modules. There were also various image libraries, font libraries etc. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the dependency tree of that included hundreds of libraries.
I'm unconvinced that 514 is crazy.
In fact, the only unusual thing I see there is that the author knows that number.
Back in then 1990's PHP was very popular. To use it, you had to compile it yourself, which involved compiling Apache 1.3 with modules. There were also various image libraries, font libraries etc. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the dependency tree of that included hundreds of libraries.