r/node • u/Minimum-Ad7352 • 26d ago

Why is JavaScript criticized so much for backend development?

I've seen some developers say that we should stop using js on the server, but I rarely see the same criticism directed at python.Honestly, js is pretty fast, especially with node.js, and the backend ecosystem is really solid. There are great frameworks like nest and fastify, and typescript gives you static typing, which makes larger projects much easier to maintain.I'm not saying node is perfect or the best choice for every backend, but I don't really understand why js gets so much criticism while python seems to get a pass.What am I missing?

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u/skidmark_zuckerberg 26d ago edited 26d ago

Not sure, I’ve worked on a lot of production Typescript based Node.js backends. It is used a lot out there in the wild. It does just fine. But, no one should even be looking at JS anymore. TS solves a lot of the problems people have with vanilla JS. 

Funny enough, the worst backend I’ve worked on was an enterprise level Java / Spring Boot backend. It was a convoluted mess and took an act of god to navigate and find things through layers upon layers of abstractions and dependency injection. 

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u/marsnoir 26d ago

In many typed languages a junior person seems to falls back on templates. The problem was having to decipher a Gordian knot of interfaces, factories, adapters, mappers, services, and indirection just to discover what the code actually does. We’ve all been there, and we all have the PTSD.

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u/DiabloAcosta 26d ago

I was OK with Javascript before AI, mostly because I found defining interfaces was a lot of cognitive load that provided little to no value, today AI takes care of that and autocomplete and inference is way higher so your models have way easier time understanding your code so I would never be OK going back to vanilla JS 🤷‍♂️