Sorry, WAT?
Java packaging and dependency management is two orders wuperior to anything you can find for JavaScript (I don’t know about PHP, but I think that situation there is not better). Kotlin mostly uses gradle as a build and dependency management tool (you can also use maven, but it is not recommended if you are not forced to do so).
In Java you do not have local environment where you can install packages, you use packages directly and they are downloaded on-demand, so install action does not make sense. For the rest see maven central.
The example you have shown is taken from gradle build script and version could be ommited. In this case the latest available version will be used, but of course it is not recommended since in that case you can’t control what version you use.