All of the problems here ultimately came down to packages that used the native Node API. You don't need python or deal with C++ to run JavaScript.

Node is an active project. If you build against the native API and don't pin your version to avoid breaking changes between versions, this is what happens. In my experience, JS very rarely breaks between major Node versions, but almost every native package requires a new major update.

This isn't a Node specific problem. Go ahead and upgrade your Go or Python version.