> Maybe it's me, but I've never looked at a list of tools and thought "this is too many!".
There is the problem of diffraction of efforts, and spreading knowledge too thin. You see some of the problems in the way linux distros do packaging - every major distro family has its own packaging system, born from NIH syndrome. The result is less portability of both packages and skills.
Some competition is good, but there is a point beyond which lots of choice becomes counter-productive. Troubleshooting also becomes harder when the various tool communities are smaller on average.
I disagree with that premise though. Just because I made a package that's in the same realm as make doesn't mean that I could have or would have contributed to make instead.
And there's something to be said about smaller single-purpose tools. Adding a ton of features to something like make to support every possible option isn't a good idea IMO. Sometimes a small opinionated package with a "correct" way to use it is best for some circumstances.
Regardless, I really think that the market will sort itself out. If it's oversaturated then some big players will rise to the top and the rest forgotten. Unlike a Linux distro package manager, anyone can add anything to NPM with zero oversight. It makes the "floor" of quality much lower, but fragmentation isn't that big of a deal as the effort to publish is so low.
There is the problem of diffraction of efforts, and spreading knowledge too thin. You see some of the problems in the way linux distros do packaging - every major distro family has its own packaging system, born from NIH syndrome. The result is less portability of both packages and skills.
Some competition is good, but there is a point beyond which lots of choice becomes counter-productive. Troubleshooting also becomes harder when the various tool communities are smaller on average.