Vanilla JS is pretty good on the client side, but leaves a lot to be desired on the server side in Node.js, even if you include the standard Node.js modules.

For example, there’s no built-in way to connect to a database of any sort, nor is there a way to easily create a basic HTTP REST API - the built in HTTP module is just raw HTTP, with no URL routing, no way to automatically JSON encode responses, no standardized error handling, no middleware layer, etc.

This means that practically every Node.js app imports third-party modules, and they vary wildly in quality. Some are fantastic, some are okay, and some are absolutely horrible yet somehow get millions of downloads per week.