Eh. Node / npm on its own is generally fine, especially if you use a private package repository for internally shared libraries. The problems show up when compiling javascript for the web as well as nodejs. If you stick to server side javascript using node and npm, it all works pretty well. It’s much nicer than venv / conda. And it handles transitive dependency conflicts and all sorts of wacky problems.

It’s just that almost nobody does that.

What we want instead is to combine typescript, js bundlers, wasm, es modules and node packages all together to make web apps. And that’s more than enough to bring seasoned engineers to tears. Let alone adding in svelte / solidjs compilation on top of all that. I have sweats just thinking about it.

> If you stick to server side javascript using node and npm, it all works pretty well.

Rose colored glasses if you ask me. The difference is it seems you use Node often (daily?) and have rationalized the pain. Same goes for everyone defending Python (which I’m sorta in that camp, full disclosure), they are just used to the worts and have muscle memory for how to work around them just like you seem to be able to do with Node.

> Rose colored glasses if you ask me. The difference is it seems you use Node often (daily?) and have rationalized the pain.

It’s not just that. Node can also handle arbitrary dependency graphs, including transitive dependency conflicts, sibling dependencies and dev dependencies. And node doesn’t need symlink hacks to find locally installed dependencies. Node packages have also been expected to maintain semver compatibility from inception. They’re usually pretty good about it.

It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty nice.

@antfu/ni does a good job on determining which of package managers should be run in the currect project