Usually, I prefer manually installing the packages needed for getting started with a new language or technlogy.
I avoid using distro package managers since they tend to be a bit outdated in this regard, and specialised package managers like SDKMAN! seem overkill for one or more packages. Exceptions being languages with excellent tooling and version management like Rust or Ocaml.
I’ve been doing this for a while and was wondering what the general consensus is
The only “compiler” I need is npm… Usually just use the one from the repos, however if it’s too old, which on most stable distros it usually is, I install a tool, called n from the old version of npm and use that to update npm…