Having worked with Maven, Gradle, Ruby Gems, Pip and the non-existing Go package management I must say I actually really like the Node / NPM combo. I guess artists are their own worst critics.
edit: forgot Scala's SBT, admittedly a builder using Maven repo's but still an excellent example of how bad UX in this area can get.
edit: forgot Scala's SBT, admittedly a builder using Maven repo's but still an excellent example of how bad UX in this area can get.