I think it's important to figure out what you're comparing though.
A language that makes it easy to pull in dependencies also encourages breaking code into separate modules.
Languages that make dependency management hard tend to have larger, heavier dependencies. Two dependencies in such a language are more likely to have duplicate functionality between them, instead of sharing the functionality through another dependency.
Is it better to vet many smaller dependencies, or fewer large ones that likely duplicate a lot of stuff? It depends on what those dependencies are.
I don't think just looking at dependency counts is that useful. Many libraries that would be a single dependency in other languages are split into several because they are useful on their own.
A language that makes it easy to pull in dependencies also encourages breaking code into separate modules.
Languages that make dependency management hard tend to have larger, heavier dependencies. Two dependencies in such a language are more likely to have duplicate functionality between them, instead of sharing the functionality through another dependency.
Is it better to vet many smaller dependencies, or fewer large ones that likely duplicate a lot of stuff? It depends on what those dependencies are.
I don't think just looking at dependency counts is that useful. Many libraries that would be a single dependency in other languages are split into several because they are useful on their own.