With Swift on iOS/macOS for instance it’s not strange at all for an app to have a dependency tree consisting of only 5-10 third party packages total, and with a little discipline one can often get that number down to <5. Why? Because between the language itself, UIKit/AppKit, and SwiftUI, nearly all needs are pretty well covered.

I think it’s time to beef up both JavaScript itself as well as the platforms where it’s run (such as the browser and Node), so people don’t feel nearly as much of a need to pull in tons of dependencies.

But that's not true? I initialize a project locally, there is zero dependencies by default, and like I did five years ago, I can still build backend/frontend projects with minimal set of dependencies.

What changed is what people are willing/OK with doing. Yes, it'll require more effort, obviously, but if you want things to be built properly, it usually takes more effort.