sigh. I'm honestly pretty happy I don't write js anymore. The landscape is... not great, right now. JS should be doing so much better.

Node.js is going to have its lunch eaten by deno because it never got its shit properly together with ESM. It's still a confusing, suboptimal experience that makes cjs the primary module system.

Node.js has basically ossified.

But then deno is going to be a trash fire because TS makes it harder to debug, its CoC story is... bad, and its package management is a joke. And package management will make or break a platform.

And of course if you're doing frontend js, you're faced with a nightmare of "devops" configuration and angry arguing between framework stans. You literally can't write a modern hello world without an advanced degree in webpack.

@LeaVerou hit the nail on the head. JavaScript has become one of the most beginner-hostile languages out there and at this point it's starting to be less effort to just write wasm.

... So people are just gonna stop writing JavaScript until it's the easier choice again.

And keep in mind the whole reason everyone put up with JavaScript's jankiness as a language was because it was ultimately the easiest language for the web (and the only one).

JavaScript is currently the most user-hostile language in widespread use