Your comments makes it sound like you don't realize Javascript runs on the server where large stacks of transitive runtime deps are actually common, and you're suggesting that because there's another problem (development deps) then the other problem (runtime deps) doesn't exist.
Any programming language runs on a huge stack of dependencies. For most languages it‘s just named „stl“ which makes it okay for most people, funnily enough.
Hell, when is the last time you saw a company C++ project without boost and at least a dozen other libraries?
I do run a lot of JS on the server and the number of dependencies we normally run is not even in the same ballpark of the number of dependencies we have on the frontend... except when the backend project also uses Webpack/Babel/ESLint/Jest/etc.
