> That script tag alone isn't going to do much without a backend. When you're starting out, you're not going to do much in the first place > the language itse

> That script tag alone isn't going to do much without a backend. When you're starting out, you're not going to do much in the first place > the language itself has at least as much WTF as php does Oh absolutely! My argument was mostly that for getting started, JS has actually less setup than PHP, not that it's a better language, or that it's a better learning language (although I happen to also believe both of those things but for different reasons, mostly because of the easily available REPL and debugger available in browsers, whereas debugging PHP is much more involved) > Most people starting from zero should be able to build & deploy a todo list app in 1-2 days and you can make a (local) todo list app in JS in the same amount of time without installing anything (because let's be real, setting up a database and web server, even bundled solutions like XAMPP can be a real challenge when you're starting out if anything at all goes sideways), and you can deploy it for free by just uploading the files to github from your browser. And if you feel that doing this without a framework is too hard there's a slew of tutorials to do it with jQuery (in the old and outdated category) or React/Vue (which don't have the added typescript complexity of Angular) I am not saying that PHP isn't great to start with, but I feel like more and more JS can really compete in that space, and has some key advantages for further progression.