Makes sense, on a rereading.

npm coupled with drastically and frequently changing libraries (and transitive dependency clashes) does make a hell of a dependency mess; I agree.

But, on the plus side, most node libraries are easy to modify. In fact, I have a private repository full of github forks that I've had to make over the years (and not had the time or patience to submit pull requests). Luckily, npm supports private repos easily.