Some of the problem with React and npm is that they are a victim of their own success.
React lets you suck in 80 components from 15 different vendors and it works. NPM lets you suck in more dependencies than many other systems because it deals with diamond dependencies better than other systems [1]
Because you can mix and match so many widget sets no wonder you will have trouble when those widget sets change.
[1] package A can import version B of package C, package D can import version E of package C -- so long as A and D don't exchange objects from package C there is never a problem, even if they do it might work.
The problem is more cultural than technical. JavaScript folks see the ready availability of dependencies as a feature rather than a risk, including the creation of a plethora of micro-dependencies (such as the left pad fiasco).
React itself is an exception which is well-developed because a competent developer team (Facebook's) depends on it. The vast majority of JS libraries are absolute garbage from idea to implementation to maintenance. Nobody should be depending on these libraries, and yet the vast majority of JS projects do depend on these libraries.
You can certainly run into similar problems in, for example, Python, if you decide to import all of pip with impunity, and there are certainly Python projects with this problem that I've worked on. But Python at least has a core group of commonly used libraries that keep sane dependency trees. You literally can't build modern JavaScript without using some bleeding edge nonsense that won't work in a few years.
Thankfully, as I've said before, you don't have to use the mainstream toolchains. Browsers and standards organizations have been much better about at least not breaking reverse compatibility.
React lets you suck in 80 components from 15 different vendors and it works. NPM lets you suck in more dependencies than many other systems because it deals with diamond dependencies better than other systems [1]
Because you can mix and match so many widget sets no wonder you will have trouble when those widget sets change.
[1] package A can import version B of package C, package D can import version E of package C -- so long as A and D don't exchange objects from package C there is never a problem, even if they do it might work.