It affects me and other people working on it. I have to make sure the systems running the dependencies have an appropriate Python and C(++) toolchain installed. If they use Node bindings, they will probably need to be updated for newer versions of Node.
When I come back to the project after some time, the first thing I need to do is update dependencies. I often had colleagues on whose devices some dependency would just refuse to compile for one reason or another.
Sure, this isn't the greatest problem in the Node ecosystem right now, but it's painful enough that I would rather not deal with it.
