I agree npm criticisms are more about the way packages are bundled than the manager itself.

To your last point, the javascript ecosystem can have a lot of users and be "broken" at the same time. I think that is a large reason why people hop around to new libraries so much.

"Well what I have now sucks, maybe this new thing will work better. (2 days pass) Nope! What else do you have for me this week?"