I don't think it's really fair to lay all of the blame with node and ruby/rails in this case; the distro package managers are just as much at fault:

http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1285063820.html

It really just depends on what you're trying to do. As a desktop user you probably care most about stability; we can't have a python upgrade breaking apt. As a developer it's often important to have an up-to-date version of the tools and libraries you're using.