How a broken language like JavaScript can deliver on "Java's broken promise" while its implementations can't be consistent even wthin a browser? Come on. Seems like too many kids are entering the industry. I guess lowering the barrier entry for taking a CS degree will lead to much more non-sense like this sentence. While Java has been a proven tech for 20 years now, practically dominating every area of the typical enteprise development, JavaScript "developers" were not even considered "programmers". Server side programming is a serious thing. Leave JavaScript to buttons, popups and alerts. Fix that client side validation that don't work across all browsers with the same code, before speaking s*it about Java. Because Java is a serious language baked by the most important players in the industry. JavaScript is not. Simple like that.

And then they accuse me when I use the term "kids" while speaking about JavaScript "developers".

Copying already available features from a language and implementing every single idiocy from the programming language research doesn't make a good language. By contrast, having a more limited set of features, doesn't make a language "worse". We live in a world where programming languages must be powerful enough to accomplish every day tasks, but still be manageable by a single individual. And hey, Java is a big language when you start from scratch, still maintains some simplicity when dealing with complex tasks. Take Scala, for example. It has a rich syntax with tons of features, 2 full paradigms (OO and functional). Learnign Scala as a first language is not that easy compared to other languages. Even experienced developers may find it to be steep, at times. Despite the fact C# may be a good language, I consider it to be highly inconvenient compared to Java. The enteprise market has been (and still is) predated by Java. And for obvious reasons. The language evolves without trying to "implement the whole world". Only proven (by the industry) language features are implemented. If some features will be considered useful to have, they will be implemented eventually.

For serious backends, the ONLY worthwhile technology is Java EE / Spring. PHP can also be a good tech for projects with smaller requirements. All the rest are toys for kids / designers / frontend developers who claim to be "full stack" / pretend to understand backend development. JavaScript for the backend? The "backend" is something more than returning a string with a REST API. In the actual state, node.js can be used for toy backends / simple apps, nothing more. For backends in the tenth of thousands of lines of codes, JavaScript / Node is not an option.

The problem is some people consider node the right tool for the backend. As you can see, the problem is not in the technology itself.

Tibor, probably you're not a Java hater. But surely you're a Java ignorant. ;-) So please, avoid to discuss on things you obviously don't know. Comparing strong typed languages to weakly typed ones is the argument for those who should not write code in the first place.

I agree it's over-hyped (over-rating it would be too much, after all). Only kids would write a serious backend using JavaScript. In fact, startups write in these languages as long as they're startups. If they go past this stage, they generally move to Java, at least for the backend. Node has its own merits, no doubt about it. But Java and JavaScript are not even comparable: the first is a serious programming language, object oriented, strongly typed, with a solid and top-of-the-line concurrency model, formalized by an open community (JCP) , baked by Oracle, implemented by software engineers for software engineers. The latter is a scripting language, weakly typed, badly interpreted, without a consistent implementation across all platforms, made by an ancient old-style committee (ECMA) for script kiddies who probably don't even know what a big-O notation is. Come on, stop comparing apples to oranges. Stop comparing scripting languages to real programming languages.

"old technology" when speaking about programming languages doesn't mean anything. You don't even know Ruby is 20 years old (1995) , exactly as Java, 5 years older than C# (2000). And you'll be surprised that your new Python is 24 years old, older than Java, C# with 24 years of existence. Java pioneered bytecode virtual machines, evolving the concept to nowadays. And the JVM is a great piece of enginnering. You consider "newer technology" languages that are older than the ones you consider old. Programming should not be your job. This attitude is the cancer of the whole industry.