We've all lived with code that was 5+ years old, even if not all those years were ours. b^) Often that meant wrangling envars to point to the right ancient binaries, assuming we could somehow get those binaries installed. None of that is required with javascript. If a dependency is causing problems, just replace it with a different one. (npmjs.com has lots of packages!) Or, write something yourself. In five years you'll find enough spare time.