I think people conflate NPM-as-package-installation-system, which I would agree works very, very well (though a lot of that is the JavaScript module/import syst

I think people conflate NPM-as-package-installation-system, which I would agree works very, very well (though a lot of that is the JavaScript module/import system in general and not NPM specifically), with two other things: NPM the web platform (which has had a lot of pretty severe security/community issues), and the JavaScript community's tendency to proliferate lots and lots of modules, many in competition, to solve problems that other languages' communities tend to solve either via reimplementation or via the standard library. I think any discussion about NPM or JS packaging compared to other package managers needs to discuss those things as orthogonal, largely unrelated concepts. Otherwise everyone just picks a favorite punching bag (e.g. left-pad) and talks past each other.