I beg to differ
1. npm install gulp
2. try to delete the node_modules folder
3. waste time fighting windows' legacy stuff (260 max path length in almost everything: explorer, cmd, git bash, etc.)
4. come across rimraf eventually
I wouldn't describe that flow as "fantastically" unless you mean "fantastically broken".
Microsoft is waking up to the fact that developers mostly aren't using microsoft dev tools anymore. Hence, docker on windows, ubuntu on windows, redesigned env vars dialog, no more path length limit, nicer command prompt, etc...
I wonder what went wrong in your case.
I do remember having trouble committing a node_modules to git because of the same MAX_PATH bullshit, but then we realized that you're not really supposed to do that anyway.
More generally, by the way, NPM 3 fixed the MAX_PATH problem for the majority of cases, when they moved away from super deeply nested file trees.
I really don't understand why people keep saying this, it's simply not true. Node works fantastically on Windows. I've yet to come across a library that won't work on my Windows box (barring obviously platform specific stuff). Node-gyp works fine too, and many libraries with native code offer Windows versions.
Especially when comparing to e.g. Ruby or Python, it's a world of difference. With Ruby you can't even use bundler on Windows and then deploy on Linux.
It seems all the basic fundamental design choices of Node and NPM were made with portability in mind. I'm frankly quite impressed.
Source: been running teams doing frontend and node for almost 3 years now, every team had at least one Win dev and at least one OSX dev, every team deployed to Linux. 0 problems, ever.