In my experience it's mostly the UX/DX where Gondolin is lacking. For instance, I don't want to set up a JavaScript project every single time I need a sandbox. Instead, I just want to place a config file somewhere in my repo or my home dir and be done with it.

So I wrote a wrapper around Gondolin which allows me to do that and a few other things: https://github.com/codethief/tuor

(Warning: Still very much experimental / underdocumented.)