689 packages is enormous surface area for a leftpad-like (or worse) failure. Given that nobody is auditing those packages and many of the people who maintain them aren't adhering to best security practices[1], I don't think taking nearly 700 dependencies that you are going to treat like a black box is a safe or responsible choice.

Xcode and the Android SDK each come from a single vendor who provides an integrated development stack and presumably vets the contents. Does anybody do that with these npm packages?

It seems like every time I run the du command in my node_modules folder, I find some crap that shouldn't be there. Earlier this year, I submitted a PR that reduced the size of the babel react preset install footprint by about a third, just by removing a totally unused dependency that nobody noticed. I don't think the contents of npm packages get nearly enough scrutiny and it scares the hell out of me.

[1] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/52-percent-of...