This attitude makes me kind of uncomfortable. Like, I have taught software development to a decent number of folks, but I've always done so in a relatively isolated environment. If one is buying into web programming, I have a hard time feeling like it matters that it's their first programming environment--it is a hostile place (the web) and some understanding of that hostility is pretty high on the list, I think, of Things To Get Used To. There's definitely a tension there with "don't overwhelm a novice", but I don't necessarily think optimizing for the novice case is wise, especially when we want those novices to have their heads on a swivel, too.
> But as a package author, I'd like to be able to mark somewhere that a particular transitive vulnerabilities can't affect my users.
I definitely agree with this, though, and this is a good way to help make something like `npm audit` more intelligible and useful.