Caveat: I'm a node outsider, only forced to interact with it
But there are a shocking number of install instructions that offer $(npm i -g) and if one is using Homebrew or nvm or a similar "user writable" node distribution, it won't prompt for sudo password and will cheerfully mangle the "origin" node_modules
So, it's the same story as with python: yes, but only if the user is disciplined
Now ruby drives me fucking bananas because it doesn't seem to have either concept: virtualenvs nor ./ruby_modules
But there are a shocking number of install instructions that offer $(npm i -g) and if one is using Homebrew or nvm or a similar "user writable" node distribution, it won't prompt for sudo password and will cheerfully mangle the "origin" node_modules
So, it's the same story as with python: yes, but only if the user is disciplined
Now ruby drives me fucking bananas because it doesn't seem to have either concept: virtualenvs nor ./ruby_modules