[nerdwaller]

I'd strongly disagree with Python being behind relative to JS. They're roughly on par (with Python being slightly ahead due to smarter caching and more deterministic builds). Unfortunately neither does namespacing nor good versioning, especially in the cache. Take for example Maven (from Java), it caches namespaced and versioned dependencies and is pretty reliably deterministic in the build process.

Verses node which makes horribly assumptions that allow dependencies of libraries to be resolved and dumped into the same library namespace as your application. It also allows users to use the shrinkwrap feature, which imposes the dependency's settings on me (say, for example, I want to use my own npmjs proxy, this is bypassed...)