13 · Environments & Packaging

Package Manager

Installs the code you depend on

A tool that downloads, installs, and updates the outside code your project needs. Each language has its own: JavaScript uses npm — plus faster, disk-efficient rivals like pnpm, yarn, and bun — while Python uses pip (or newer ones like poetry and uv) and Rust uses cargo.

Concrete example

“npm install” (or “pnpm install”) pulls in every library a project lists, in one command.

Why it matters

Nobody writes everything from scratch; this is how the rest gets fetched.