> compile and run programs with incompatible version dependencies and then they crash at some point

Just because Java does this doesn't mean every language has to. It's not strongly tied to the dependency management system used. You could have this even with a Java project using lockfiles.

> a package 5 layers deep is unmaintained and is on an ancient dependency version, other stuff needs a newer version. Now what? Manually dig through dependencies and update versions?

Alternatively, just specify the required version in the top-level project's dependency set, as suggested in the article.