> All software has bloat, but npm packages and web apps are notorious for it. Do you think it could be inherent to the language?

It sure seems like it is because JS devs, by and large, suck at programming. C has a pretty sparse standard library, but you don't see C programmers creating shared libraries to determine if a number is odd, or to add whitespace to a string.

> you don't see C programmers creating shared libraries to determine if a number is odd, or to add whitespace to a string.

Believe me, if C had a way to seamlessly share libraries across architectures, OSes, and compiler versions, something similar would have happened.

Instead you get a situation where every reasonably big modern C project starts by implementing their own version of string libraries, dynamic arrays, maps (aka dictionaries), etc. Not much different really.