People who think JavaScript is easy have made a big mistake.
There are multiple build chains to pick from. Multiple package managers each with nuances. Every need (e.g. ORM, logging) has multiple options to choose from each with some shortcoming you won't discover until you are deep into it. It has vulnerability types that do not exist on other platforms.
The language is easy and flexible, but the platform as a whole and ecosystem is a mess if you want to ship enterprise grade software. The moment you realize the need to define meta types on the BE (Zod, class-validator, etc) is the moment you should just start transitioning to a runtime typed language because you've realized "Actually, runtime types are kinda nice".
Many teams realize this too late and are stuck in JS hell which infects everything the team does and creates drag at scale. It creates drag in the CI because you need more checks and the tooling itself is slow. It creates drag in the DX because I have to restart the TS language server multiple times a day. It creates drag in the platform config because it's spaghetti to get things working and it's slow to build at scale.
For FE, it's hard to avoid. For BE...why do it to yourself if you know you're not building a toy?
Yes, I build JS backend, but it's fine for my side projects. Great even! For real, high value work? It is a mistake every time because it requires much more babysitting than almost anything else.
There are multiple build chains to pick from. Multiple package managers each with nuances. Every need (e.g. ORM, logging) has multiple options to choose from each with some shortcoming you won't discover until you are deep into it. It has vulnerability types that do not exist on other platforms.
The language is easy and flexible, but the platform as a whole and ecosystem is a mess if you want to ship enterprise grade software. The moment you realize the need to define meta types on the BE (Zod, class-validator, etc) is the moment you should just start transitioning to a runtime typed language because you've realized "Actually, runtime types are kinda nice".
Many teams realize this too late and are stuck in JS hell which infects everything the team does and creates drag at scale. It creates drag in the CI because you need more checks and the tooling itself is slow. It creates drag in the DX because I have to restart the TS language server multiple times a day. It creates drag in the platform config because it's spaghetti to get things working and it's slow to build at scale.
For FE, it's hard to avoid. For BE...why do it to yourself if you know you're not building a toy?
Yes, I build JS backend, but it's fine for my side projects. Great even! For real, high value work? It is a mistake every time because it requires much more babysitting than almost anything else.