What is NPM and why do I need it?
In the past, I made some websites with notepad for example, so we must create a folder TREE and put into it a .htm file, and some folderS with stuff like Javascript, css ...
Maybe I don't understand what NPM really brings, because It seems to do the same thing but automated it ... is it just that ?
For example, why not just unpack a frameworks (e.g. Bootstrap or Kube) without use of NPM and so have folders ready to use ?
Help me to understand please because I'm near the crazy state with all this stuff ...
Answer
npm is a package manager for Node.js with hundreds of thousands of packages. Although it does create some of your directory structure/organization, this is not the main purpose.
The main goal, as you touched upon, is automated dependency and package management. This means that you can specify all of your project's dependencies inside your package.json file, then any time you (or anyone else) needs to get started with your project they can just run npm install and immediately have all of the dependencies installed. On top of this, it is also possible to specify what versions your project depends upon to prevent updates from breaking your project.
It is definitely possible to manually download your libraries, copy them into the correct directories, and use them that way. However, as your project (and list of dependencies) grows, this will quickly become time-consuming and messy. It also makes collaborating and sharing your project that much more difficult.
Hopefully this makes it more clear what the purpose of npm is. As a Javascript developer (both client-side and server-side), npm is an indispensable tool in my workflow.