We have been ripping out node bc basic backend frameworks are too small and mercurial, so breaking API changes every year on simple things like making an HTTP request has meant a lot of time not spent on our users. The ROI is often ultimately miniscule perf, and ironically, CVE fixes from such a cowboy culture. (We are also ripping out node bc current inability to work with data ecosystem well + shitshow that is build times / maintaining them.)

Frontend has been getting better. Part of that is we have largely stopped adding any dependencies and been chiseling down to react + a few components, and between them + the webpack team, focusing on the few teams we trust to respect end user code more than they value whatever feature idea that month.

I spent years on making JS better and we have built stuff to make it sing, so bittersweet business decision driven more by the unmaintainable code culture than the language (npm/node are growing up, V8 is amazing, React achieved a lot of what early framework people marched for, ... ).

EDIT 1: Part of the technical problem may be around npm <> semvar and in turn, the dev culture around it. Dutifully updating semvars upon breaking changes may have given a false sense of being friendly for maintenance. Major upgrades are still necessary in practice due to peer dependency requirements triggered by CVEs etc. It's ~awesome to now see breaking changes in better modules. However, having to do via searching github stinks, and horrifying how many there are. This is still a far cry from not consistently breaking everywhere, gofmt, etc.

EDIT 2: I don't blame OSS devs for hobby projects unrelated to their work and with no claims of aiming for prod ready / corp use. But as soon as we get to core node infra teams and their VC sponsors causing a bait-and-switch on infra focus, or tech leads at unicorns & bigco's doing their here today / gone tomorrow thing, etc., I get heart pain around adding any dependencies around this broken tech<>social ecosystem.