Maven/Ivy/SBT/Gradle/etc. Are a lot older than NPM. They solved a problem that wasn't well solved before. They're certainly not perfect, but I'm not sure NPM would be where it is today if we as developers hadn't learned from what came before it.

Sure they could be better, but there is a very large community relying on them, and the community is largely pre-complied code with different requirements from node.

I've used both stacks for years. I have no complaints about Maven, to be honest, it just works and I don't really spend much time thinking about it as a result. On the other hand that's been less true for npm, hence why I've now switched over to yarn.

Maybe I'm missing something though - 100x is a bold assertion and I guess you must have some very strong reasons for preferring npm's features over Maven to warrant that - would you mind explaining a bit more?

I'd take Maven/Gradle over pip though, personally.

This is somewhat like saying "Tesla and it's cousins are so much better than the VW Beetle"

like... ok, but that's being somewhat unfair to the latter and needlessly aggrandizing of the former. I'm a big Node fan but this kind of braggado is not productive.