Node

Why Node 8?

Node 8 is in LTS now and ships with NPM 5 (see below to update to NPM 6) which is much faster (which means you don't have to use yarn anymore).

Install Node 8 and NPM 6

$ curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo -E bash -
$ sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

The nodejs package contains the nodejs binary as well as npm, so you don't need to install npm separately. However, in order for some npm packages to work (such as those that require compiling code from source), you will need to install the build-essential package:

$ sudo apt-get install -y build-essential

Update: It looks like NPM 6.0 is out! Update it with: sudo npm i -g npm