My main "professional" language is Python, but I have written at least toy programs (100-1000 LoC) in R, Javascript, Typescript, Ruby, Perl, Lua, Go, Crystal, C, Common Lisp, Racket, Guile, Idris 2, Haskell, Zsh, Bash, and POSIX-ish Sh, as well as written non-trivial AWK, Sed, and Jq scripts. Also Hy and Fennel to the extent that those count as separate languages.

Having a package manager means I can easily reuse other people's code. Not having a package manager means I can't.

Note that my use cases almost universally involve either "scripting" or developing low-volume server applications that are deployed in container of some kind, or on a VPS that I control.

I have only developed nontrivial standalone "libraries" in Python, and I only use Lua/Fennel for Neovim plugins (where I am not alone in bemoaning the lack of a standardized way to declare dependencies [1]).

In almost every program I have written, my priority has been on rapid development/prototyping. I want to be able to do things like parse JSON, make HTTP requests, perform lookups in tables/mappings/dictionary-like structures, and manipulate text.

I also have a day job, an amazing life partner, and more interests/hobbies than I have time left in my life to spend on them. For me, time spent fussing with manually copying source trees and reading through dense manpages is time I could be spending on other things.

I also come from the worlds of statistics and data science, where it is often said that "nobody cares about your code." Time spent reinventing tools is time not spent cleaning/exploring data, revising a report, building a dashboard to accompany said report, or trying out some new techniques.

So to answer the 2nd part of the question: it's going great!

[1]: https://neovim.discourse.group/t/plugin-metadata-formats-wha...