3 months might be (close to) hyperbole, but webpack/JS package management is a source of consistent pain. It sticks out like a sore thumb across my web stacks (PHP/WP, Ruby, Elixir) and its brittle complexity causes the most unpleasant dev experience I have to deal with.
I doubt it's my incompetence alone - npm is involved in over 25% of Phoenix's issues!
Can’t speak for the integration into non-JS ecosystems, but since I started using Create React App instead of rolling my own Webpack configs a few years ago, I’ve had approximately zero weird npm issues.
I maintain a Rails codebase and a Node codebase. We are using esbuild for Node / JS bundling, along with TypeScript. The Node project is much less of a headache than the Rails one, mostly due to TypeScript. We’ve also made an effort to minimize our dependencies. We have fewer npm modules than gems.
All that to say, Rails is fine. But Node is also fine, if you treat it more like Go (minimal dependencies, lean on the vanilla underpinnings).
I doubt it's my incompetence alone - npm is involved in over 25% of Phoenix's issues!