Per rule 6, please back up your opinion with the reasoning behind it.
JavaScript was originally built in just ten days to handle lightweight tasks within a web browser, like validating forms or animating buttons, not to power the heavy logic of server-side infrastructure. Using Node.js forces this fragile scripting language to do work it wasn’t designed for, lacking the strict stability, type safety, and multi-threading capabilities of robust languages actually engineered for servers, like Java or Go. By pushing JavaScript onto the backend, the industry prioritized the convenience of not learning a second language over engineering rigor, resulting in bloated applications, security vulnerabilities from excessive dependencies, and significant performance ceilings that proper backend languages simply do not have.
I believe the problem is developers, not the language. The problem is developers importing node.js and other giant frameworks for a simple function. That’s not a language problem. Bad coders are going to cause the same problems in any language.
The same problem exists in C when a simple Windows app requires a separate install of the vcruntine140.dll. Java also has enormous libraries that programmers abuse because they are cutting and pasting codestack they don’t understand.
I agree that’s the main problem, but if it didn’t exist or was never attempted to be used that way, it wouldn’t be a problem to begin with.
I just implemented a NestJS API for my client for the sole purpose of spiting you. And I didn’t even write it myself, I let Cursor do it for me. What are you gonna do, segfault me? Laughs in NaN
Popular opinion, downvoted.
I think it’s only popular among us. Out there in the industry there are tons of developers who attended a three months training course then landed a job in big tech corps. None of them or the language itself cares about efficiency. Something that works before they move on is good enough.
Yea this is a classic “I agree with this, so it must be popular”.
If it’s popular then why does it still exist and applications today are still being built using it?
Because its the only language in browsers so it’s ubiquitous, and it’s elegant and cost effective (note i didn’t say it’s a good idea) to use the same language on back-end and front-end.
Webassembly is a thing, and it’s only a matter of time before Google or Microsoft ship either a dotnet runtine or a go interpreter or some other FOSS shippable component as a chromium plugin or something.
Inertia is powerful though
JavaScript should not exist, at all.
I love JS since es6, but I never want to use it in the backend. I always want a typed language, or else python. But I always feel a little happy when I’m coding front-end JS.
It’s a pretty core aspect of the web, I think it’s necessary, but it was taken too far.
Some kind of scripting language was necessary, I don’t think JavaScript had to be it.
First there was C++: bloated, complicated, and not memory safe. So they came up with Java, which was similar in syntax but much less complicated, with great memory safety, and a decent type / object system. It was popular in the day, with a cultish fan base, and was seen as cool. So they (meaning Netscape) wrote something that looked like Java but got rid of half the good features. Nobody thought at the time that JS mattered much, it would be soon replaced by something better.
And that was decades ago. It was never meant to run the web for that long. It did an acceptable job, but it is very frustrating in the long run.
The problem with Java applets was the slow startup time of the VM. JavaScript loaded quickly and executed immediately.
The real dominance of JavaScript started after Flash died. Starting with the iPhone, the booming smartphone didn’t support Flash. Websites needed to migrate away from depending on Browser Plugins. The only option was JavaScript. Microsoft Silverlight, Java Applets, Flash, Shockwave were all Plugins. Mobile Browsers don’t support plugins because of performance, security, and usability issues. Users of all of these platforms switched to JavaScript for lack of a better option. The introduction of electron and other JavaScript powered applications on the desktop is a long term consequence of that transition. The death of the browser plug-in had severe consequences.
JavaScript started out as a cut down Smalltalk clone because the dev thought that Smalltalk was cool. Then they bolted a curly braces syntax onto it and called it JavaScript for marketing reasons.
The big alternative was Microsoft’s VBScript, based on Visual Basic and not available on any browser other than Internet Explorer.
We’re arguably better off with JS in the browser. Of course server-side JS is a spectacularly bad idea.
This is a popular opinion as far as I’m concerned.
As an IT professional with like 5 years of web dev experience and am now in cybersecurity, node.js + npm + chromium = electron = literal fucking minefield scattered across the entire internet and beyond.
If it’s popular then why do so many of those things still exist?
“Murder is bad” is a popular opinion. So why do so many murders still happen???
Comparing using Node.js to murder is hilarious.
Node.js is the preferred backend solution among mass murderers
Because, as you already very well know, things don’t happen because they make sense, or because people who know stuff think something is a good idea.
Things happen because enough people got into it. That’s it.
And even if everybody wished JS to die, it simply won’t, because people need to get paid, and devs already in the ecosystem won’t switch, cause switching is expensive.
Things happen because enough people got into it.
If it was a popular opinion then people wouldn’t have gotten into it.
Even if it was popular by 60%, the rest is still a lot of people.
Built software doesnt just disappear when popularity wanes. There is still TONS of PHP running websites actoss the internet, despite it being out of favor. Hell, there are still cobol programs running at large companies who were very early tech adopters.
JS has permeated so much, you wont see it disappear in your lifetime.
Because project managers talk to stakeholders and have no idea how anything works.
And that’s because when people who know how things work talk to stakeholders, no one buys.
Welcome. To, the machine.
I always felt like TypeScript was a sad attempt to make JavaScript something it isn’t.
There are perfectly good languages and JavaScript should only be used for lightweight scripting purposes. Sure Node can work for small web projects, but man what a clusterfuck it becomes at the enterprise level.
Even for small things it turns into a clustefuck.
It’s almost a miracle how bad it is.
It’s almost like Perl in that regard.
A proper type system should be like the bumpers in a bowling alley, where you know the ball will at least stay on the track. Typescript is more like the ball launching ramp, where you probably won’t yeet the ball straight into the gutter but it can still certainly end up there.
I agree TS is just not a good idea to start with, but it might at least be respectable if it actually had runtime enforcement. Maybe then node wouldn’t be as horrible, though you’re always better off with a real backend language anyhow.
Popular opinion among those who write code. Unpopular opinion among those who pay people to write code.
