I think the answer is to not import the dependency at all.
If you absolutely can't write a single function, then copy/pasting it from a set of "known good" functions would be better than importing a dependency.
Of course, just writing the function would be better. It would probably take less time than discovering the package, working out the interface for it, discovering that it doesn't actually work for your use case, discovering another, better package, etc.
If you think it’s easier to find and import a library to test if a number is even than to use the modulus operator in an if clause, should you really be responsible for writing any code at all?
I feel like JavaScript in particular has developed this ecosystem of inexperienced programmers that “don’t know what they don’t know”. I don’t want to discourage anyone, but I feel like other languages (particularly more mature ones) don’t have that problem to the same degree.
For instance, I feel like the cluster module in Node is far easier for people to do things they shouldn’t with than any of the equivalents in C# or Java or even PHP (so it’s not just compiled vs scripting languages).
I think the catch is that "microlibraries" can still contain reasonably large amounts of functionality that's non-trivial to replicate.
I'd be happy enough to import single-function dependencies for "urlencode" or "is_valid_email" rather than manually grow out all the edge cases (again).
I agree, and happily import moment.js for that reason. But that's not what the GP was talking about. This is not a "microdependency". It's something that should have been included in the standard library, except that JS doesn't have one of those.
If you absolutely can't write a single function, then copy/pasting it from a set of "known good" functions would be better than importing a dependency.
Of course, just writing the function would be better. It would probably take less time than discovering the package, working out the interface for it, discovering that it doesn't actually work for your use case, discovering another, better package, etc.