The intent was not really to get into a detailed deconstruction of JavaScript, it was just to comment on the fad-chasing behavior of the JavaScript subculture,

The intent was not really to get into a detailed deconstruction of JavaScript, it was just to comment on the fad-chasing behavior of the JavaScript subculture, as a follow-on to the parent poster's recognition of this within React users. I don't understand how any person can pretend that everyone was excited about the "promise" of JavaScript back in the day; you'd have to be relatively new to the scene to earnestly believe that, and as a prominent HN poster whose posts I usually enjoy, I know you aren't. This must be some reverse-psychology thing where you're trying to convince yourself that the emotional fad-chasing was in fact merit-based. Your points are all backwards-looking. I've already conceded that JavaScript is a major/important platform today and I've accepted that I need to use it in various new ways besides basic DOM manipulation, regardless of the deep sadness for tech culture incurred by doing so. Now that Node.js has ridden the hype train for 8-ish years, there is "great vendor support" and "a huge library". For the sake of argument, we'll gloss over the facts previously mentioned that a) as "the default delivery platform of the web", JavaScript is still massively constrained, and it's much easier to "deliver" backend applications with a real server-side language; and b) that this "huge library" includes many things that would be part of the standard library in a better-managed language, and that there are a great many undesirable side effects to the npm model of allowing random GitHub users to control huge dependency chains (from both a security and a QA perspective; cf. the left-pad fiasco). Before V8, even JS inventor Brendan Eich spent much of his time offering excuses for and acknowledgements of its major inadequacies: "I only had 10 days!" and "At least it's not VBScript!" being the primary responses. I don't want to diminish Eich's herculean efforts because they truly are impressive, but the point is that no one pretended that JavaScript was the kind of thing that you'd want to use in any context where it wasn't mandatory. This is very unlike Python, Java, or most other professional-grade languages. >So this has nothing with Google releasing v8 -- the industry in general wanted faster JS execution. V8 was revolutionary because it took JavaScript from one of the slowest languages around to the nearly-the-fastest dynamic language (vying with Lua for the crown). The demand was there so that browsers could become a platform for more intensive client-side applications like 3D games. Nonetheless, without Google's propaganda machine turning its gears, V8's announcement would've been relegated to the same small group that followed the release of other JS VMs. It is completely due to the "I'm cool like Google too!" mentality (which has had massive influence on tech over the last 10 years) that Node.js got any traction whatsoever. Node.js made its V8 backend one of its primary marketing points to reinforce that association and make people believe that using Node.js was like using a super-cool Google-fied JavaScript instead of the normal, boring JavaScript you knew from the past.