There is a subset of JS codebases that are good, well engineered and written by people that understand the languages faults and limitations but the list is incredibly small and even smaller still now Joyent isn't really around anymore.
If there was one ecosystem I wish I never needed to touch again it would be JS but unfortunately it's become so pervasive that isn't really a tenable position anymore.
This is the money quote of the thread for me. From the perspective of someone whose main language has been JS or TS for about 8 years, it's getting worse since some of the biggest names in the discipline just seem to be people with large social followings giving terrible advice. This advice is then eaten up by hoardes of bootcamp alumni who have been given a loose understanding of React and unleashed on the world as "junior developers".
But maybe I'm just cynical.
It was great while it lasted.
In Java, the engineering culture is strong but stagnant.
Python is toxic, it's full of scientists, the engineering is bad (but a little better than PHP because the community is of a higher calibre).
I'm happy you bring this up. Us developers have a tendency to blame bad code on poor tooling/languages or on individual developers or organizations. Not enough attention is given to cultural factors within various ecosystems that systemically induce bad coding practices.
Java has incredibly high quality tooling because the engineering culture demands it. (also they tend to pay for it which creates a market. I myself pay maybe ~$400/yr total for my professional tools, Jetbrains Toolbox, Yourkit, etc)
The changes to the language and runtime also follow from this.
I would say Java and it's periphery ecosystems show the most promise in 2020 bar maybe Rust. There is also great things going on in C#/.NET space but I'm less involved there than I was previously so can't speak to how fast it's moving.
Eventually, he bites a spoiled sandwich with mold and drinks spoiled milk.
That is the best analogy for npm.