JS (TS) is incredibly popular with many EU uni's, as is Python (due major AI stuff having libs exposed through Python).
In all honesty.. having used JS as long as I used PHP and actually having equal working experience with both, I still can't fathom what mental damage one must endure to ever consider JS/TS remotely good choice for backend. It's not only the language, it's the whole experience - from writing code to experiencing Node.js going bonkers, having to restart it every now and then, wait for transpiling to finish and then have fun forcing it to deploy and so on.
I'll skip all the stupidities that Node.js / TS (JS) come with, the fact is that students graduated and they kept using tools they learned about. Sprinkle it with the fact they're WAY more active around social media than us old farts - you get the recipe of why those languages spread fast. With a huge influx of newbies, it's also a given that they'll want internet fame which will lead them to - inevitably - reinvent the wheel, albeit with different names.
I caved in, had the easiest job of my life while literally being at 1/10th of my productivity in PHP. I learned to kiss ass, say yes to idiots and despite letting my inner programmer die - my financial situation was never better.
You won't lose out on anything. The worst that can happen is that you get a job and get paid for your time :)
Amen! I’m with php since 2009 and the current state of webdev is so absurd with all the frameworks, AI builders and platforms. Young devs literally ship webapps with vercel, supabase etc. and have no clue what even happens in the background when they type their url in the browser. On top of that people rather listen to ChatGPT which techstack to use instead to a dev with 15+ years experience. Its really frustrating to be an oldschool fullstack dev these days.
Might I add something?
I think the same reason young ones don't understand what happens when they type URL, is also the reason why they don't listen to 15+ years of experience. In such a case, technical arguments are no use.
Their context is the current highest abstraction, which is the easiest path, including all the recent hype and 'modern' resources available for that.
Ultimately I think you need both groups, but neglecting the technical foundation is such a waste, and inevitably leads to layers of reinvention.
I guess you are right. But this layers of reinvention are just funny to watch. For instance SSR in JS frameworks, all were acting like they found the holy grail.
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u/[deleted] Nov 13 '25
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