I'd say that what needs to change is your mentality.
There's a lot of things you can do to change how you're thinking. It all comes down to understanding the essence of why you're feeling this particular way.
What are you trying to achieve?
There's so much that can go wrong in modern web dev it seems.
The tech stack I'm using is: Nodejs backbone mongoDB
Is this the kind of thing you mean by modern JS approach?
You probably already aware but just in case your not one possible option for you is to try a vm like virtual box using one of bitmani's pre configured systems
It's not a silver bullet but it may help
PS
If you do give virtual box a go don't use shared folders, at least not until you have got your build tools installed and running.