[dangerlibrary]

I don't think effective package management solutions were really pioneered by node and NPM.

You could pretty easily re-write your comment and say "Look at the trails Debian + apt have blazed. That's the right move."

[knappe]

Or, for a more apt (heh) comparison:

https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems

[jjwiseman]

"If you are writing a package manager for a new non-js language, do whatever it takes to get that new language to load modules the way node does. The right way."

http://dominictarr.com/post/25516279897/why-you-should-never...

http://dontkry.com/posts/code/modules-the-right-way.html

To be more specific, what npm does that pip, debian, and rubygems don't do is nested dependencies, which is a wonderful advancement.