I maintain a Rails codebase and a Node codebase. We are using esbuild for Node / JS bundling, along with TypeScript. The Node project is much less of a headache than the Rails one, mostly due to TypeScript. We’ve also made an effort to minimize our dependencies. We have fewer npm modules than gems.

All that to say, Rails is fine. But Node is also fine, if you treat it more like Go (minimal dependencies, lean on the vanilla underpinnings).