Saying that those things "fix" Node amounts to an admission that you shouldn't have started with Node in the first place.
a) A small core API instead of a sprawling standard class library
b) A highly composable export and require mechanism, better in some interesting ways than what exists in other systems (1)
c) The fastest growing and soon to be largest community repository of packages (2)
d) asynchronous by default stack and ecosystem.
With those things in hand, "bolting on" is a virtue and not a disadvantage. That Node is general-purpose - you can build cross-platform desktop applications, streaming servers, web applications, console utilities, etc - and does not impose its package opinions are major factors in its success.
1) http://blog.izs.me/post/1675072029/10-cool-things-you-probab...
ES6 standard promises have landed in v8 (https://code.google.com/p/v8/source/browse/trunk/src/promise...) so it's only a short matter of time until the "batteries included" solution is available.
But that doesn't mean people will be forced to use them.
If the Node community admits these are desirable characteristics of a programming development environment, then they've lost, because they can not compete on any of those three fronts. The entire value proposition of Node was basically that those three things weren't important. If they are, Node's arrogant swagger turns into a frantic attempt to cobble together enough functionality to pretend to have the features that exist better elsewhere.
Don't think you can sell me on fundamental weaknesses in your language of choice being features, twerquie. I've got too much experience in too many environments to fall for that.
Why, it's almost as if Node is built on fundamentally 1990s scripting technology based on fundamentally 1970s event-based ideas or something, instead of being the radical revolutionary departure we all know it really is.
I'm not interested in arguing about technical superiority, I'm sure node is no where close to ideal. But, like javascript itself, it's popular, interesting, useful, and here to stay. From my perspective, for better or worse, javascript is the most important programming language of the decade.
Using adjectives to accentuate, does not an argument make. "small/core" and "sprawling" all have loaded meanings. And if you wish to convert anyone but the already-converted sub-culture inhabitants, you should probably quantify what you mean and why it's a benefit.